Чепмэн Степан

Revenge of the Calico Cat

Stepan Chapman

Revenge of the Calico Cat

I wasn't there; I simply state

What was told to me by the Chinese plate.

— Eugene Field

After Turtle got out of school, he and his pal Snake took a walk through the garment district. They got endless enjoyment just from watching the people go by. They marveled at all the different kinds of stuffies who lived here in Plush City. Snake made mental notes of everyone they passed.

A sock monkey in steel-toed boots. A fairy ballerina with cellophane wings and a bright pink tutu. A spider in a lacy white bonnet with a fly in velvet knee pants. A king in ermine cape and gold foil crown, pushing a toothless tiger in a wheelchair. A little green man with a propeller-headed whatsitz on a leash. An Indian brave in a war bonnet with an eye-patched pirate on a peg leg. Plush City was like a Fourth of July parade every day of the year.

The sun sequin was still riding high in a cloudless sky. What a great place! Snake was so fucking glad she'd come here when she died.

Turtle and Snake wove their way through the sidewalk racks of the cut-rate doll clothing merchants. It was a sunny Friday afternoon in July of 1931. The pushcarts of the food vendors filled the air with the smells of roasted franks and hot pretzels. The kids passed the storefronts of the arm and leg sellers on Scrap Street between Rockabye and Velveteen, and all the little appliance repair shops and delicatessens and eye stores on the side streets.

They turned the corner at Nursery Avenue and Satin and walked east toward the three-story apartment block where Turtle lived with his mother. There was nothing much out front of the building — just some bare dirt and a sign that said NO loading. Turtle and Snake ducked down the alley where it was shady in the afternoon. Snake slapped an empty bottle around with the end of her green plush tail. Turtle tossed up bits of gravel and tried to hit them with a plank.

Up on the third floor, someone was playing a swing band record on a phonograph. A female trio sang the lyric in close harmony: "The gingham dog said Bow Wow Wow! and the calico cat replied Meow! The air was littered in an hour or so with bits of gingham and calico."

"Is Plush City part of the United States?" asked Snake.

"Beats me," said Turtle.

"I been asking people where they come from. Everybody comes from America, it seems like."

"What about the Chinks?"

"I ain't talked to any Chinks," said Snake. Then she heard Mr. Brownbear shouting on the second floor. "Hey, that crazy bear is talking to himself again. You wanna go spy on him?"

Turtle and Snake scurried up the fire escape and crouched in gleeful silence outside a kitchen window. If they peeked over the windowsill, they could see through a doorway into Teddy's den. Teddy was pacing up and down, flinging his arms around and ranting at the walls. The kids could only glimpse him, but they heard him loud and clear. "I bet you he breaks some furniture tonight," whispered Turtle.

"I bet you he breaks his old lady's head," said Snake. Everyone in the neighborhood knew about Teddy and Edna and their so-called fights.

Teddy Brownbear lived in a crummy sweltering apartment on the second floor. He was sitting in his armchair in his undershirt, boxer shorts, and socks and listening to a football game on his radio. He was also eating a bowl of popcorn and working on some cold bottles of brew. The wall clock said four.

Inside his fuzzy brown head, deep in his crushed velvet brain, Teddy was working up a grievance against his wife Edna Pinkbunny. Edna worked as a surgical nurse at the big uptown hospital. It wasn't right. She ought to be home taking care of her husband. Damned depression had everything turned around. On top of everything else, she'd be late getting home tonight. Teddy could sense it coming. A lot she cared, the bitch.

Teddy'd been out of work for more than a year, which gave him a lot of time to think about his ball and chain. He turned off his radio and paced around the den, kicking at the throw rugs and muttering to himself. He felt like kicking apart the furniture, but he couldn't afford that kind of indulgence. A man had to control himself. Like when you slapped your old lady around, you didn't leave marks on her face. Unless of course you intended to.

He thought about Edna’s face. That smug celluloid face of hers with the pert black nose and the wide acetate eyes with the little blue pupils inside that rattled when he shook her. Once he'd thrown hot coffee in that face, and she'd deserved it. Maybe tonight he'd mash her paw under that cut-glass ashtray. And if that whore upstairs called the police dogs again, he'd rearrange her face too.

Meanwhile, under the bathroom sink, Teddy's beloved hamster Fang was squeezing his fat mangy body through a gap in the wires of his cage. Fang was a vindictive wretch with bad breath and crooked teeth. He crept on the tips of his claws into the kitchen, staying under cover of furniture so as to sneak up on Cuddles. Cuddles was Edna's parrot, and a sickly specimen she was, living on her perch beside the Kelvinator. Her chief amusements were gnawing at her yellow plush claws with her yellow plush beak, pulling loose threads from her wings, and dry-humping her perch.

Cuddles caught sight of Fang and scolded, shuffling her claws from one end of the perch to the other and back again. Fang shinnied up the stand of the perch and snapped at her tail. Then he fell to the linoleum and landed on his head. Cuddles squawked feebly and groomed her tail.

Teddy threw a shoe into the kitchen. It hit the perch. Cuddles took flight and battered her head against the water-stained ceiling as she struggled to fly through it and escape. Fang raced madly to and fro along the baseboards, squeaking up at her. Teddy chuckled in his armchair. "Give her hell, Fang. It's good to have an interest in life." Fang scrambled up the grimy wallpaper and slid back down. He'd never learn.

Teddy turned to the kitchen. He thought he'd heard kids' voices. He threw down his bowl of popcorn, stormed into the kitchen, and thrust his head out the window. A couple of reptiles were hightailing it down the fire escape. "Get outa here!" Teddy shouted after them. "Ain't you got no better place to be?"

"All ya fadda's mustache!" Turtle yelled back.

"Go suck a lemon!" yelled Snake.

Teddy pitched a potted geranium after them. The pot exploded in the alley. Turtle and Snake ran west along Satin Street.

Teddy leaned on the windowsill. Above his head, music drifted from the open window of the dance instructor on the third floor. A phonograph was playing a record featuring the Lord Jellyfish Big Band and vocals by the Gopher Sisters. "The Chinese plate looked very blue and wailed, 'Oh dear, what shall we do?' But the gingham dog and the calico cat wallowed this way and tumbled that, employing every tooth and claw in the awfullest way you ever saw."

Teddy returned to his den and gave the ceiling a dirty look. Lazy slut, playing records all day and half the night. No consideration. He turned up his radio to drown out the music.

He eyed a kitchen chair with implacable hostility. He yearned to kick it to bits, just to relieve his aching heart. But Teddy was the kind of bear who kept control of himself. He would drink his beer and wait for Edna to get home.

A lavender plush octopus slithered past an out-of-business shoe store. He slid east on nervous tentacles, mumbling under his breath.

When T.B. was making a delivery or a pickup, he always walked. He never took buses, and he never even thought about a cab. Too easy to get jumped in a cab, and T.B. was a little guy, never much good with the rough stuff. He always walked, and he never took the same streets twice. Safer that way. He liked to play things safe.

T.B. wore his overcoat although it wasn't cold. He was carrying a briefcase full of play money to a Chinese laundry on the east side. The money wasn't T.B.'s money, and the laundry wasn't a laundry.

The money belonged to Little Vince the Ocelot. The laundry was a front for the Fighting Fish, a tough new organization that controlled various shady enterprises around the train yard. The Syndicate guys called them the Chinks.

T.B. Otherweiss was a very nervous octopus doing a nervous job for some extremely nervous stuffies. The job involved bundles of cash, balls of black opium, and other small packages, the contents of which he neither knew nor wished to know. T.B. was a regular one-mollusk messenger service for the Syndicate. But he'd never be a wise guy. Only mammals were eligible. No matter. The Syndicate gave him steady work and protection from the heat. Protection from everybody else in Plush City was his personal problem.

Two little kids followed T.B. for a couple of blocks. Frogs? Lizards? Something green. He ignored them, and they soon lost interest. He crossed under the elevated train tracks at Sleepytime Avenue and slid west along Button, a quiet industrial street of ice factories, ribbon dairies, and cotton packing plants. He made it to the laundry on Corduroy Street a little after five. There was no one inside but a small yellow shark behind a bare counter.

The shark led T.B. out the front door, in again at a side door, through a trap door, and down a narrow staircase into the bowels of an opium den. The air was thick, and the ceilings low. But the floors were clean and waxed, and the clientele were all discreetly screened from one another. The setup reminded T.B. of a sleeper coach in an interstate passenger train.

Just like every time before, the shark led him up a ladder to a well-lit room where sea bass in pigtails and coolie jackets sat at a long lacquered table counting play money and working abacus beads. Supervising the accountants and smoking a cigar was a shriveled old stingray with a Fu Manchu mustache, who wore an elegant high-collared tunic of dove-gray silk.

"Mr. Cho," said T.B. The stingray regarded him with a cold stare and a barely perceptible nod. T.B. slid the briefcase of money onto the table.

Normally at this point, one of the accountants would open the case and count the bills. Then a different accountant would replace the money with something the size of a grapefruit, tightly wrapped in butcher's paper. The oval bundles were presumably balls of opium. T.B. had never opened one.

Instead of the usual, no one moved. The abacus clicking trailed off. The stillness of the room grew eerie. "Mr. Cho?" said T.B. "Don't you want to count the money?"

"No good," said Mr. Cho. "This money no good. We no accept payment."

T.B. curled his tentacles a little tighter. "You think the money is counterfeit? Look at it."

"Money from you no good. You no good. Take money away."

"You don't have the merchandise ready? You want to reschedule? I hope you're not calling off the deal."

"Deal fine. Next week, same like always. This week, no good."

"Please talk to me, Mr. Cho. Or else please get on the phone and speak to Little Vince. He likes to know about this kind of stuff in advance."

"No talk Vince. No talk you. Go." A couple of big sharks had been standing against a wall in shadow. Now they advanced on T.B., who took a hint and grabbed his case in two tentacles.

"Little Vince ain't gonna like this," he said. Then he turned and climbed down the ladder through drifting layers of heavy smoke. He could hear the sea bass laughing at him.

T.B. left the laundry twice as nervous as when he'd arrived. Now he had to go back to the west side with the cash instead of the black stuff. And since the handoff was a wash, Vince might not even pay him this week, the little cheapskate. T.B. didn't do this for his health, damn it.

He paused at a newsstand beside the Playtime Avenue subway entrance. He suckered a dime from his pocket but dropped it trying to give it to the news vendor, a fat old walrus with a mustache. T.B. bent down to pick up the coin. His tentacles were shaking under him. Jesus, what a day. When he straightened up the walrus was holding his gut, and bright red ribbons were gushing through his ink-stained apron like party streamers. Jesus fuck! The poor guy was gut shot! T.B. whirled around, yanking his sweet little Derringer pistol from its holster.

T.B. spotted the moose with the Luger. The guy was right across the street. Wasn't even hiding. Hadn't expected any return fire. The moose got off another round before T.B. could draw a bead on him. The slug tore through T.B.'s overcoat and slashed his side. T.B. fired his pistol, missed the moose, and demolished the window of a jewelry store. A burglar alarm went off. The moose ran fast up the street. T.B. could have shot him in the back, but there were too many people around.

T.B. tucked his hardware back under his overcoat and staggered down the stairway to the subway station. As luck would have it, a westbound train was just loading. T.B. slid inside, and the train pulled out. The bullet wound still felt like a paper cut, but that wouldn't last. He had to return the cash to Vince while he could still get around. Then he'd get himself patched.

T.B. hung from a strap and puzzled over the moose. Why would a strange moose try to kill him in broad daylight? Presumably for the money. But who'd be dumb enough to snatch money that belonged to Vince the Ocelot? Vince was one of Boss Mandrill's top guys. Killing a nobody like T.B. was no big deal, but messing with the Syndicate's cash flow, that was serious. Unless it was somebody new in town who didn't know the score. But how would a new guy know about the briefcase? This was pointless. T.B.'s brain was spinning its wheels in the mud. First things first. Get the cash back to Vince before anything happened to it.

The train lights flickered. The train slowed and jolted to a stop between stations. What now? The giant monster thing again? Perfect timing. Now T.B.'s day was complete.

Turtle and Snake sat on the floor of the apartment block's vestibule with their backs against whitewashed cinderblock. Turtle sat under the mailboxes. Snake was curled up under the table where the postman dumped the circulars. Turtle stared at his feet. Snake stared at her tail. "You want to play Parcheesi?" asked Snake.

"Naw."

"You wanna watch those guys fix the street?"

Turtle picked his beak with his pinkie claw. "Naw."

"You wanna get your binoculars and go up on the roof? We might see a freighter dock at the pier. We might see the dog and the cat."

"Why would we see them? It ain't even dark yet."

"It's a full moon tonight."

"So?"

"They like to fight on the flatlands when the moon balloon is full."

"It ain't dark yet."

"But the moon is up."

"The hell it is."

"Go look at it. And the sky'll get dark soon."

"The hell it will."

"You wanna go get your binoculars? Huh, Turtle?"

"I got better things to do." Turtle stood up and sighed, making it clear that he was doing Snake a favor. "Okay. I'll get them." He went upstairs to his apartment. Snake stayed in the vestibule. Turtle's mother had a low opinion of Snake, so Snake stayed out of her way.

When Turtle got back, the binoculars were hung around his neck, and traces of powdered sugar clung to his green plush beak. "Maybe they'll fight near the city," he said hopefully. "You remember the time when they knocked over that silo at the train yard?"

"That was awesome," Snake had to agree. They started up the stairs to the roof. While they were climbing, the civil defense alarm bells went off. Turtle and Snake looked at one another. They couldn't believe their luck.

"The monsters are coming!" shouted Turtle. He took the rest of the stairs three at a leap, with Snake sidewinding breathlessly behind him. He ran to the eastern edge of the roof and trained his binoculars on the Dollhouse Mountains, where they sloped down into the badlands. But there were too many brown cardboard buildings blocking the view.

Snake was gaping at the sky. Cloud masses of cunningly tailored gray felt were moving west across the badlands. "Close your mouth," said Turtle. "You'll catch flies."

"I wouldn't mind eating a fly," said Snake with a grin. Turtle punched her playfully in the side of her neck. "Oww," she said. "That hurt." Turtle handed her the binoculars.

Snake looked out across a choppy sea of west-side roofs and water tanks and vent hoods. She focused the lenses on the landmarks of the city center. There was the observation deck of the Argyle Pleat Building. There was the spire of Crepe Cathedral. There were three lanes of outbound traffic being tunneled onto Needle Overpass. There was the domed roof of Angora Stadium. There was the flag of the Stitch Museum. All bathing in a green twilight, as the sun sequin set into the skyline behind Snake's back.

Turtle snatched back the binoculars. "Where are they?" he asked crossly. "I don't see nothing."

Snake looked at the sky again. The faded blue silk of the daytime sky was peeling itself free from the ceiling of the world. It was beginning to creep west, wrinkling a little as it went, drawn toward the western horizon by unseen hands — the hard wrinkled hands of the Washerwoman Who Lives Beneath the Table Land. As the day sky was pulled down for a good scrubbing, the night sky was revealed, its star sequins glittering in all colors. Snake was struck by the strange and arbitrary nature of the world. Especially the parts that were beautiful. What a contrast the starlight made to the dingy yellow light that leaked from the city all night.

Forks of silvery tin lightning stabbed through the charcoal gray bellies of the darkening clouds. Unseen cymbals crashed behind the sky.

"I see them!" shouted Turtle. "I can see the dog and the cat!

Drifting hazes of rainfall blurred the mountain slopes, and cloud shadows moved across the badlands. Two other huge forms were moving across the badlands as well — huge and slow as cloud shadows, but zigging and zagging or sometimes tracing a loop. The larger form was pursuing the smaller.

The pursuer was a stuffed hound done in orange-and-white checks — as long from nose to tail tip as a subway train. He grinned as he ran. His ivory shoe-button teeth gleamed in the green twilight and the drizzle. Silver saliva ribbons drooled from his muzzle, whipping in the wind. His long felt tongue licked strands of red ribbon from his gargantuan gingham-checked chops. His black glass eyes were wild and hungry. He'd been chasing the cat all day. Her blood ribbons tasted delicious. He couldn't wait for dinner.

Driving her out of the mountains was half the battle. Here on the badlands, the dog could outrun her. He'd bring her down easily now. Unless she made it to the cardboard city of the tiny folk. Cities had too many places where a cat could hide, even miniature cities.

The purple cat had put some distance between herself and the dog. Her mother-of-pearl claws gouged puncture wounds into the hardpan as she ran. The stitchings at the rims of her green glass eyes were bloodshot. She threw a glance behind her and sickened at the sight of her ripped hind leg. A triangle of white-dotted calico was detached from its canvas backing, napping free. Another bite like that and she'd be leaking ribbons in piles. She yowled mournfully and ran a little faster. But she was only the size of a freight truck. She couldn't keep up this pace.

She let the dog catch up with her and wheeled on him, hissing. She raked her white claws across his black velvet nose. Goose down leaked from his snout and flurried around him like snow. He yelped and stumbled to a stop. He pawed glumly at the slash on his nose.

"You're such a pussy," said the cat.

The dog perked up. "That's very good."

"I thought you'd enjoy that."

"You're very clever," the dog said admiringly.

"I know it," said the cat.

"Well. shall we?"

"After you."

"But you should have a head start."

"Perhaps I should," said the cat.

Again the mad dash of the two behemoths exploded across the badlands. The cat made for the flatlands, galloping majestically westward. All along the eastern fringe of Plush City's industrial district, plaid watchmen in plaid watchtowers hit their red panic buttons and sounded the monster sirens. The sirens wailed away, soaring and dipping like banshees from another world. Searchlight beams stabbed out from the Argyle Pleat Building and swept the flatlands, casting strange shadows across the sagebrush and the stones. Nurse Pinkbunny scrubbed in and pulled sterile latex gloves onto her paws. She was very adrenalinized. It wasn't every day that she assisted a prominent pediatric surgeon like Dr. Beaver. Besides which, today's procedure was very unusual. The patient was a newborn kangaroo with two heads. Dr. Beaver would attempt to normalize the infant without "sacrificing viability." In other words, he'd try to cut off one of its heads without killing it. Actually it was quite difficult to kill a stuffie, even an infant. Little things like lungs and kidneys grew back in a matter of days.

Edna backed into the O.R. through swinging doors, minding her gloves. She checked the instrument trays to make sure there'd be no surprises. Dr. Beaver was consulting with the anesthesiologist Dr. Grayclam. Though the air conditioner was humming, beads of moisture had already formed on Dr. Beaver's brow. A heavy perspirer. Edna unspooled some extra gauze and cut it into strips.

The newborn arrived on a gurney. Anesthesia was established. Dr. Beaver began the amputation with an incision to the deformed infant's left throat. The oxygen mask hissed at the edge of audibility. The lights were very bright.

"That artery," said Dr. Beaver to Nurse Peahen. "Is that silk or satin, would you say? I want the thread to match."

Nurse Peahen leaned in. "It looks rubberized."

"Radioactivity?" said Dr. Grayclam.

"Who knows," said Dr. Beaver. "People have no business having babies here in the first place. And these idiots were inhaling cleaning fluid."

Edna had to agree. Babies were supposed to arrive in Plush City from the material plane. A few new ones were found each morning, outside the hospital in wicker baskets. But strange medical conditions like pregnancy were growing more common since the giant monsters started battling so close to the city. There was talk that "monster radioactivity" had gotten into the water supply.

The baby was doing fine, but its neck anatomy seemed to have thrown Dr. Beaver. "Suction," he snapped at Nurse Peahen. "Over there by the… the… the. That thing. There. And get that kite string out of my way. And when I ask for suction, give me suction. God damn it!"

"Sorry, doctor." The nurse struggled to comply. But the more the surgeon snipped and sewed, the more tiny red ribbons spilled from the white cotton muscles.

Nurse Pinkbunny dabbed the sweat from Dr. Beaver's forehead. She could imagine the tense frown behind his white mask. "Thank you, Nurse Pinkbunny," he said. He'd remembered her name. Edna wondered whether he was attracted to her. Once in the cafeteria she'd caught him admiring her breasts.

The amputation went sour. The infant was fighting the ether, and if it woke up, it would go into shock. "I told you to have masks for both heads," Dr. Beaver harangued Dr. Grayclam. "But no. You had to do it your way." Meanwhile the nurses were having terrible problems with the jugular hemostats. The infant was losing a lot of ribbons.

Suddenly Nurse Peahen jumped back from the baby with an involuntary cry of disgust.

"What?" said Dr. Beaver. "What now?"

She pointed her index claw at the baby's furry beige belly. "Things are crawling on it."

Now the doctor jumped back. "We have bugs in here? Bugs?"

Edna leaned over the baby, peering down through her wire-rimmed glasses. "Tiny kangaroos," she said.

Dr. Beaver yanked off his mask. "What?"

"She's giving birth," said Edna. "She's having a litter. They're looking for her pouch."

Dr. Beaver flushed a darker brown, and his tail began to slap at the floor tiles. "The infant is giving birth to more infants?"

Edna nodded. "It must be a mutation."

"What shall we do with them?" Nurse Peahen asked querulously. "They seem to be viable."

"I give up!" said Dr. Beaver. He snapped off his gloves, hurled them to the floor, and marched out of the room. Dr. Grayclam looked at the nurses. The nurses looked at him.

"Who's going to finish the procedure?" asked Nurse Peahen.

"Hell," said Dr. Grayclam. "I'll do it. Anyone can do this stuff. It's just sewing."

At this point the voice of Miss Zebra made an announcement through a wall speaker. "Urgent phone call for Nurse Pinkbunny. Extension seventeen." Miss Zebra ran the hospital switchboard.

"I'll be right back," said Edna. She took off her gloves and walked slowly down a pale green corridor to a wall phone. It would be Teddy of course. Edna wondered what his idea of an emergency would turn out to be. Perhaps he'd run out of beer. She lifted the receiver.

"Teddy, why are you calling me at work? We've talked about this. I'll be home when I'm home. Have you been listening to the radio? The whole city is on monster alert. People are filling up the subway shelters. Just pull yourself together, Teddy. It's a dangerous world out here, and you aren't the only one in it."

Edna hung up. She felt calm and confident. Confident primarily that Teddy would beat the crap out of her tonight. Of course he would. As the night followed the day.

"Are you okay?" asked Nurse's Aide Sunflower, stopping in the corridor with her arms full of laundry.

"I'll live," said Edna.

T.B. struggled up the stairs of the Cookiemilk Avenue subway station. He had to fight his way through a steady stream of stuffies bound for the monster shelters. T.B. wasn't concerned about giant monsters. He was worried about getting the briefcase back to Vince before he passed out. When he emerged onto street level, Vince's bar was in sight, right up the block. He slid north, leaving a trail of red ribbons behind him on the sidewalk.

T.B. mopped his warty lavender head with his handkerchief and dried off the suckers of three or four of his arms. He hobbled past a pawn shop, a record store, and a bakery. There were signs in the windows. closed for monster attack.

The bar was occupied by its normal clientele, a coven of sleazy mammals smoking cigarettes and guzzling dangerous rot-gut. Jerry Sloth and Ernie Koala were drinking whiskey sours at the bar. Rico the Mongoose and Yvette the Mink sat in a booth at a table crowded with ashtrays, dentures, empty shot glasses, and elbows. A couple of out-of-work elk were playing eight ball in the side room.

T.B. climbed onto a stool and leaned on the bar. Theresa the Sock Monkey approached him. "What's your poison, T.B.?"

"Not now, Monkey Face. I'm just resting my legs."

"You got a lot of legs to rest, T.B."

"I gotta talk to Vince."

"Back room. You know the way." He knew it well.

T.B. slid to the rear of the bar and limped up a hallway past a cigarette machine and the door to the lavatory. Harry the Mule stopped him for a frisk. Harry was Little Vince's personal bodyguard. He took T.B.'s Derringer but never touched the briefcase.

Vince's poker game was cranking along as usual, and as usual Vince wasn't playing. He was sitting at a circular table off to one side, going over some ledgers with his accountant Pokie the Stork. Sitting at a third table by herself and nursing a gin gimlet was Vince's bimbo, a doll that everybody called Ladybug for some reason. (She wasn't a ladybug, she was a doll.)

Ladybug was an eyeful. Her hair was fire-engine red, a bottle job but classy. She wore a sinuous ice blue evening gown, and her fishnet stockings stretched all the way down to a pair of stiletto heels.

No one in the room seemed overjoyed to see T.B. "You got the stuff from the Chinks?" said Vince. It wasn't really a question. Vince didn't ask people questions.

"No," said T.B. "There's a problem this week."

"What problem?"

"Mr. Cho wouldn't tell me. He sent me back here with your money. Said the money was no good, and I'm no good. Maybe he thinks it's counterfeit. I couldn't get a straight story out of him."

Vince scowled. "They didn't give you the stuff?" he snarled through his sharp little teeth.

"No, Sir." T.B. set the briefcase on the table next to the ledger. Deja vu. At least the stork wasn't working an abacus.

Vince stroked his whiskers and smiled at T.B. This was something he'd never done before, and T.B. didn't enjoy the experience. "I don't want the money either," said Vince. "Take it with you when you go." The room fell silent. The poker game ground to a halt.

"It's not my money, Vince."

"It is now. I'm giving it to you. Hold onto it. Take a vacation." Vince was serious. What the hell was going on? And when the hell was someone going to let T.B. in on the gag?

"But Vince, it's your money. You want me to take it to the bank or something?"

"No, jerk-off. I want your ugly face out of my bar. And don't bring it back. Take a hike."

T.B. was pleading now, wringing his tentacles distractedly. Sweat was trickling down his face and matting his plush. "Don't be like that, Vince. I'm not a bad guy. I don't mess with your money. I don't even nibble around the edges like some I could mention. It's your money. I'll just leave it here." T.B. started for the door.

Vince pulled a big black pistol from his coat. It wasn't the kind that shoots caps. The guys at the poker table sat up very straight. "Take the briefcase with you," said Vince.

"You're gonna shoot me if I leave it here? Well, I don't like getting shot, Vince. I've already been shot at once today. Maybe you know something about that."

"You're fired," said Vince. "Consider the briefcase your severance pay."

That raised a chuckle from the wise guys. Little Vince should be on the radio. He was a regular panic, this ocelot.

T.B. suckered one arm to the briefcase, snatched his gun from Harry the Mule, and limped down the hall. As he slid past the lavatory, he could hear the wise guys laughing at his expense. Deja vu all over again. He sat down at the bar. Theresa nudged his arm. "Want a drink, Sailor?"

"No, Monkey Face. Gotta run. Which isn't easy with eight legs." The stupid gag bought him a smile. "Hey Theresa, can I leave something behind the bar?" Keep it light, T.B. Like an afterthought. Carton of eggs, quart of milk, a carton of Luckies, and leave the briefcase behind the bar.

Theresa gave him a look like a sock monkey who'd just been bitten by a snake. T.B. was a grifter and betrayed people as a matter of course, but he seldom came face to face with a look like this one. It was rapidly reducing him to a grease spot on the bar-room floor. "No, T.B, you can't," was all she said

He dragged the case off the bar. He was poison. He was wrong. He hit the street and slithered north. He knew a good greasy spoon about two blocks up the way at Cookiemilk and Pompom.

At the beanery, which was called Eat Here as far as anyone knew, T.B. took a corner booth at the back. The only other customer was a caveman in a leopard skin reading a racing form. He'd parked his club beside the coat tree. The waitress was a green plush dragon with buck teeth. She dropped a laminated menu to the table. T.B. ignored it. "Chili and a cup of mud, black."

"Wit' cheese?"

"Sure, with cheese. Cheese for the cheesy." She turned around without writing on her pad. A pro.

While T.B. nursed his coffee and waited for his chili, the beanery filled up a little. The caveman was joined by a pair of yellow sharks and a very familiar little sea bass. T.B. pegged the bass as one of the abacus pushers from the opium den. It was fairly obvious that the bass had T.B. pegged too.

Swell. The Fighting Fish were after him now. And knew exactly what was in the case. But why was Vince cooperating? Some kind of secret payoff? But why did T.B. have to die? What was Vince's angle? There had to be an angle. Things didn't just happen at random.

A stingray came in the door, jingling the bell. He sat down and studied the menu. It wasn't Mr. Cho, but so what? Asian faces didn't eat here. Certainly not four at the same time. These guys had ambush stamped on their foreheads. What was T.B. supposed to do? Make a run for it? Draw his sidearm and mow them all down like in the cowboy movies?

T.B. sipped his coffee. A dagger whistled past his head and embedded its point in the wall plaster behind him. T.B. whipped his eyes back to the fish. All of them were smiling at him, but he couldn't tell who'd thrown the knife. Damn, these Chinks had fast fins. T.B. would probably get the wire-around-the-neck trick performed on him before he made the door.

Screw it. T.B. gulped the last of his coffee, slapped down a quarter, and scuttled for the door. He ran into the street and kept running, legs windmilling. The bell on the beanery door jangled behind him, and the rip in his side throbbed like a jellyfish in a bottle of Clorox. But hey! No one was coming after him. T.B. kept running anyway, for as long as he could manage. Then he leaned against a lamppost on Comforter Boulevard, wheezing like an out-of-tune engine on a frosty morning.

What were the Fighting Fish playing at? Some kind of warning? Weren't bullets warning enough? He was caught in the middle of something, but what? The middle of what? It hardly mattered. T.B. had to blow Plush City fast and stay away until this whole mess blew over.

There were places he could disappear to. There was Puppetropolis. There was Lawn County where the tin toys lived. There was Ark where toys carved from wood went when they died. T.B. could buy a train ticket and ride. The money in the case made it simple. A bandage, a train ticket, maybe a change of clothes, and he'd be living it up in Candy Land on Vince's play money. He wouldn't go back to his rattrap apartment though. That would be a sucker move after two slugs and a dagger in one afternoon.

Should he head for the train station? Maybe not. Get this rip mended first. T.B. buttoned his overcoat and moved on.

He thought of his girlfriend, Doris the Doll. Assuming she was his girlfriend after the blow-up last week. Maybe he should scout her hotel, see if she was home. Even if she wasn't, he could jimmy the lock and hide out for a couple of hours, pull himself together. But she'd probably be home. The daylight was still fading, and Doris was the kind of working girl who worked by dark of night.

Yeah, Doris's place was probably safe. If a giant monster didn't step on it.

Turtle and Snake cut north on Nursery, heading for the under-structure of Scissors Bridge. They figured their lookout fort on the bridge was the perfect vantage point for watching monsters wreck the place. Silk River made a cozy loop that encircled the whole west side, and from the middle of the bridge you could see half the city. You could look south and see Bastingstitch Bridge and the dockyards or look north and see Cutieface Bridge and the sewage plant. You could look west across the river and see Mildew Swamp or look east and see the lights of the Argyle Pleat Building.

Snake loved to see the lights of the city shimmer on the river water. Sometimes she rode the Velveteen Street bus for hours after dark, back and forth, just to look out her window while the bus crossed Scissors Bridge. At night the city was beautiful, because you couldn't really see it. You could make it something better in your mind. Then the sun sequin came up, newly polished by the Washerwoman, and its cold steely light made everything ugly again.

Turtle grabbed Snake by the neck. "Hide!" he whispered. "Beanbags!" The street ahead of them was blocked by a loitering gaggle of beanbags. The beanbags were the sumo wrestlers of the west-side gang scene. What they lacked in detail and personality, they made up for in sheer bulk.

A corduroy beanbag spotted the reptile kids and started jeering at them. "Hey, look at this. Here's a little fag that plays with girls. You like little girls, turtle? Maybe you are a little girl. You wanna bend over and find out?"

"Hey, Slobbo, would you fuck a snake?"

"I might fuck a dead snake, haw haw haw."

"Hey, Blobbo, what would you do with a snake?"

"I'd cut her head off and fuck her in the neck, haw haw haw."

"Is that how you treat a little girl?"

"She ain't a little girl," Turtle called back, trying to sound defiant from behind a rain barrel.

The beanbags laughed and started to throw rocks. Turtle and Snake beat a hasty retreat. Their escape was facilitated by the passage of a flock of panic-stricken citizens with their red flannel mouths wide open and their arms in the air.

Turtle and Snake ducked into the doorway of a hardware shop and lay low. "Are you okay?" asked Turtle.

"I guess so," said Snake. "Nothing ripped."

"We can circle the block, cut north again on Porcelain."

"Yeah."

Turtle tied his tennis shoes, which were already tied. "You ain't really a girl, are you? My mother said you was a tomboy."

Snake frowned. "It's a little hard to tell with snakes, but. Yeah, Turtle. I'm a girl. A tomboy is a girl that acts like a boy."

"Uh," said Turtle. He couldn't quite wrap his tiny fabric brain around the concept. He took refuge in the familiar. "If I had a sulfuric acid cannon, I would dissolve those bastards."

"Yeah," said Snake. Then they heard the crash of giant monsters colliding with nearby buildings.

"We're missing the best part!" wailed Turtle.

They bolted south toward Silkfront Road. Turtle ran as fast as his plump little green plush legs would carry him, and Snake slithered loyally behind him.

The cat led the dog on a broken-field chase through the industrial district's steel foundries and chemical plants. As the monsters approached the city limit, the yellow plaid monster squads poured from their yellow plaid armory in their yellow plaid flatbeds with the swivel-action dart cannons.

The cat charged up the middle of Textile Street, three stories tall. Ahead of her swarmed a crush of shoving shouting stuffies, all trying like mad to get out of her way. They succeeded only in compacting each other into a solid mass. The cat stumbled through the screaming puddle of flesh, mashing flat no small number of them. The emergency rooms would be full tonight.

A monster squadsman fired his dart cannon at the cat. Unfortunately the rubber suction cup didn't stick, and the dart bounced off. The cat licked her side, looked around in confusion, and took her revenge on a florist's delivery truck. She rammed the truck through some plate glass into a penny arcade and crushed seven school children, whose pitiful burst bodies took weeks to heal. The cat was so distracted with pedestrians and trucks that she didn't hear the dog coming at her.

He pounced on her back, and instantly all hell broke loose. The two monsters seemed to levitate within an orange-and-purple tornado of slashing claws, snapping jaws, and flying bits of gingham and calico skin. They ricocheted off buildings like a madly spinning pool ball. Bricks flew like shrapnel, maiming the stuffies who cowered indoors. A movie marquee broke the back of a balding rag doll. Falling shards of glass cut dozens of unfortunates to ribbons. (And that can take months to heal.)

The cat looked west up Textile and saw the wide cardboard facade of the Piecework Commerce Center. She made a sudden dash for the underpass where the street passed under the building, four lanes wide. She squeezed herself into the tunnel and out the other side, squashing the toy cars with the bad luck to be in her way. Several motorists suffered unscheduled amputations.

The dog tried to follow her through the tunnel, just as she'd hoped he would. He got stuck halfway through. He squirmed and growled and clawed at the commerce center, but still he couldn't budge. He bucked with the strength of desperation. The roof collapsed and buried him. He thrashed in the dusty dark and bucked some more. The building's cardboard shell split in two. The dog threw the two halves over on their sides and clawed his way clear of the wreckage. He shook the dust from his floppy checkered ears, slid down the mound of debris, and ran west again, sniffing for the scent of his dinner.

A yellow plaid monster squadsman positioned his flatbed for an artillery assault. His partner was manning the gunnery chair. They'd loaded their cannon with an experimental harpoon dart that had tacky glue all over the suction cup. They fired on the dog as he ran past, but he caught the dart in his teeth and kept running. Resultantly the flatbed was dragged three blocks on its side and wound up in the lobby of the Eyeglass Bank Building. So little was left of the two squadsmen that the surgeons uptown had to sew it all together just to keep any of it alive.

The cat was looking for a tree to climb. She settled for the el tracks. She scampered up the scaffolding and crouched on the tracks, spoiling for a fight. A toy train rounded a bend and came at her. She derailed it.

The dog was no climber, but he managed the el tracks and pounced on the cat again. The scaffolding crumpled beneath them. Some power lines came down as well, spitting blue sparks. The cat got a nasty electrical shock, which inspired her to a new burst of speed.

She careened south on Embroidery Boulevard and climbed the side of the Angora Stadium in one great scamper. The domed roof was too high for the dog to reach. He raced around and around the stadium, first clockwise then counterclockwise, trashing everything that got underfoot.

The cat was still nervous, looking around for higher ground. She crouched down on the stadium and launched a heart-stopping leap across the intersection of Flipflop and Suede. She landed on the northeast corner of the tenth story of the famous Argyle Pleat Building, Plush City's tallest skyscraper. While the dog yapped helplessly at street level, a million stuffies gaped up at the cat. She climbed the APB higher and higher.

Far above her, at the APB's cloud-capped summit, was the penthouse floor and the notorious Polar Club, the speakeasy where high-rolling Antarctic types came to blow their rolls in style. On the bandstand, a five-piece seal combo played hot jazz, while jitterbugging penguins covered every square inch of the open-air dance floor. Bootleg hooch, dizzy heights, and jitterbugging under the stars were all the rage with the well-connected penguin set this summer.

Besides the dance floor, the club provided a lounge, a skating rink, and a refrigerated pool. The rink was full of sea lions tonight, prosperous bulls in cravats and spats, with their flippers wrapped solicitously around the thick waists of their diamond-dripping cows.

The cat announced her arrival by darting onto the dance floor and devouring three penguins at one swallow. They really hit the spot too, after all that running around. The clientele evacuated the speakeasy with all due speed. Curious, the cat trotted around the facilities. She drank from the pool, sniffed at the ice rink, chewed on the bandstand. Then she lay on her side on the dance floor and licked her calico flanks with her red velour tongue. First her flanks, then her forelegs, then her haunches. Then she tested her claws on a white shag carpet. She could hear the dog barking down below. Let him bark. The night was young.

The dog took a run at the skyscraper's base and slammed himself into it. It trembled. He rammed it again. It tipped. Again. It fell over like a tree and devastated seven city blocks. A fire broke out in the rubble. Red tin fire engines rushed to the scene, clanging their bells. Dalmatians in fireman's caps attached hoses to hydrants.

The cat leapt from the rapidly descending Polar Club to the pyramidal roof of the Stitch Museum. After that her bad leg was broken as well as ripped. She clung to the apex of the roof, leaking scarlet ribbons as if they grew on trees. Wads of her cotton stuffing tumbled down the roof and showered the tanbark paths of Tassel Park. Cotton floated on the ornamental pond. Then the cat herself skidded down the roof and fell like a sack of bricks to the pavement of Ping Pong Plaza.

At once the dog was on her, slavering and nipping. He sank his teeth into her broken hind leg. He shook her like a rat. The leg came clean off.

"Now you've done it," said the cat, lying woozily on her back.

"Oh there's worse to come," said the dog, whose mouth was full. "Shall we?"

"I really couldn't."

"I insist."

"But I can't even stand."

"Allow me." The dog clamped his jaws around her belly and carried her, dangling from his mouth, west up Suede Street to the bridge across Seam Expressway. He dropped her over a railing into the westbound traffic. An ambulance and four passenger cars piled up against her ribs with a squealing of toy tires and a crunching of painted tin.

The dog jumped down beside her, causing wrecks in the eastbound lanes. He heaved her into his jaws again and carried her along the expressway toward the river. He was tired from his long day of hunting. Now what he yearned for was a quiet place where he could eat his dinner in peace.

Police dogs arrived in their prowl cars and fired mortar shells after the monsters, who by then were out of range. The ambulance teams from Pattern General turned up next and began the work of removing crushed citizens from their cars. Minutes later the biplanes of the Civil Defense & Crop Dusting Corps arrived at the wreck of the Argyle Pleat Building with stink bombs and sneezing powder.

Edna had finally made it home from the hospital, hours late of course, thanks to the monsters. Now Teddy was slapping her around. He was bellowing. She was screeching. He'd been waiting all day for this.

He was working her over pretty good. He threw her into a wall, picked her up by her ears, dragged her into the kitchen, closed a drawer on her paw, and pushed her insipid pink face into the drawer knob for good measure. The noise from the neighborhood poured into the apartment — the screaming, the shattering of glass, the honking of toy auto horns, the endless rise and dip of the sirens. The noise level seemed to encourage Teddy.

He crumpled up an empty soup tin and used it for brass knuckles. The ragged metal edge opened up some nice deep cuts in Edna's face and tore loose tufts of pink fur when his blows struck her forearms. Afterwards he let her sit in the armchair and catch her breath. He even brought her a wet towel and let her wash her face. Then she said something that really pissed him off, and he was forced to go to the closet for his putting iron.

While Teddy had his fun in the den, Fang was amusing himself with Cuddles in the kitchen. The mischievous hamster was wearing his little chef’s apron. He'd battered the parrot with egg whites and bread crumbs, trussed her up in aluminum foil, and arranged her on her back in a casserole dish, with some baby potatoes and parsley. He'd also preheated the oven. He tasted the marinade in the dish and applied it with a basting brush to Cuddles's exposed parts. She kicked feebly at the aluminum foil. Fang rummaged through a drawer and found the meat thermometer.

Back in the den, Teddy advanced on his wife with putting iron uplifted. You could break a little pink bunny's ankles with a putting iron. If the bunny had any bones, that is. No bones in Edna, sadly. But there were still things inside her that Teddy could break. And Teddy was ready to break them all tonight. He demonstrated his golf swing, whistling the putter's head through the air over Edna's head. She held her ears over her eyes and wailed in fear.

Just then the gingham dog came capering up Satin Street with the three-legged calico cat hanging from his mouth. The happy swinging of his tail knocked over lampposts on both sides of the street. He trotted right past the apartment block and veered left onto Fuzzy. As he passed, the cat's limply swinging head bashed one corner of the building.

In Teddy's den, a fat chunk of cement and rebar bashed through the ceiling and landed on his head. He crumpled to the carpet and lay where he fell — still breathing but knocked senseless. He was completely at Edna's mercy. With not a witness in sight.

Should she run away, she wondered. Talk to the police dogs? File charges?

Or should she simply take her revenge?

The phonograph needle in the room upstairs was skipping now, playing the same snatch of music over and over again. "Clock, it told me — clock, it told me — clock, it told me. "

T.B. was floating down a sidewalk in a strange city. All sorts of stuffies were swimming past him — stuffed cabbages, stuffed olives, stuffed salmon, stuffed turkeys. A sinister black limousine cruised past, wiggling its tail fins. A rear door flipped open. There was an eel in the back seat holding a machine gun.

All at once bullets were punching holes in innocent bystanders like they were cans of condensed soup. T.B. dove for the sidewalk and turned gray. Scraps of lead-riddled stuffies writhed like dying worms in the trash-strewn gutter. It was like some terrible dream.

T.B. woke up on a sofa in a furnished hotel room. Doris the Doll was wiping his face with a washcloth, sitting beside him in a black brocade robe. There was a bandage on his rip. Everything was Okay after all.

"You're awake," said Doris. "Is your head on straight?"

"Straight as it gets, Doll Face. Got any java?"

"You thumped on the door and passed out. You've lost a lot of ribbons."

"They grow back."

Doris nudged the bandage. "How'd you let a thing like this happen, T.B.? I thought you were smart."

"Where's my briefcase?"

"Under the sofa."

T.B. groped under the sofa with four of his arms. He retrieved the case, unsnapped the latches, and looked inside. The money was still there. "Where's my gun?"

"In a safe place. You can have it when you leave."

T.B. studied Doris's face. "Do you feel like a vacation, Doll Face? They say Candy Land is nice this time of year. I'm ready for something different."

"How different?" she asked, sliding onto his lap and twining her arms around his shoulders.

"Different enough, Sugar. What's the alternative? You gonna stay in this hellhole city until it kills you?"

There was a knock at the apartment door. T.B. shoved the briefcase back under the sofa. "Who would that be?"

"I dunno," said Doris. "It could be the lemur from next door. He pays me to loan him my clothes."

"Get rid of him."

Doris unbolted her door and opened it. Standing in the hallway were two Chinks. One was a yellow shark, big enough to be denting his fedora against the hall ceiling. The other was Mr. Cho. They strolled in like they owned the place and trained two big black guns on T.B.

T.B. stood up, not too steadily. "You sold me out," he said to Doris. "You called me in to the Fighting Fish."

Doris shrugged. "I called you in to Vince. I can't afford to cross Vince."

"You think I can?"

Doris touched his cheek. "Poor little mollusk," she said with sadness in her blue glass eyes. "You're poison now. You're wrong. And you're not going to talk your way out this time." Mr. Cho and the shark sat down on Doris's bed and made themselves at home.

"Why am I wrong? What have I done?"

Doris lit a cigarette. "You haven't done a thing. It's a deal that Boss Mandrill made with the triad. They're going to hunt you down like a dog, T.B. Which is just what Harry the Mule did to a triad kid last week, for no particular reason, just boredom. You heard about that kid they buried?"

"I heard about it."

"Well, the Fish didn't like it, and they complained to Boss Mandrill. So he cut them a deal. He offered them payback, and you're it. You and that cash in the briefcase. The cash is just to sweeten the deal. I don't know why Vince chose you for the patsy. I guess you're just the expendable type."

"So I'm tagged for the Big Burn Pile, and everybody's happy, huh?"

"I'm not happy at all, T.B."

"Well cheer up. Prohibition can't last forever."

Mr. Cho and the shark stood up and gestured with their guns, inviting T.B. to leave the hotel with them. Doubtless they'd throw him in the trunk of a car and drive him to a secluded spot, before or after they croaked him. They stood on either side of him, took a tight grip on two of his arms, and moved him toward the door.

"Can I at least have my overcoat?" he asked them. Mr. Cho nodded to Doris. She pulled T.B.'s coat off the back of the sofa and draped it around his shoulders.

"Doris," he said, "if you're planning to throw boiling water on these creeps, right now would be a good time." Doris laughed in spite of herself. T.B. could always make her laugh.

The fish and T.B. were tightly packed as they hustled him through the doorway. Tightly packed was exactly how T.B. wanted them. It was all so easy.

What happened next seemed to be over before it began. All at once the fish were flopping on the floorboards, grabbing at their necks while pink ribbons gushed out of them. They'd made sure that T.B. had no gun, and that had made them careless. They hadn't figured on the little concealed pockets in the hem of his overcoat. So they hadn't expected the straight razors. And best of all, they'd forgotten that an octopus has eight arms.

T.B. slid back into the apartment, heading straight for Doris. She was kneeling beside her phonograph, throwing records around and groping for something in a cabinet. At the last second she snatched the disk off the turntable and threw that at him. He knocked it aside and grabbed the collar of her robe. "Be careful with those things," he hissed into her pretty painted face. "Sharp edges." Her scream started strong then shrank into a gurgle. Half a minute later she was lying on the carpet with her throat slashed.

T.B. wiped his razors on the bedspread, retrieved his pistol from under the phonograph, and pulled his briefcase from under the sofa. Then he said goodbye to Doris. "Hugs and kisses, Sister. You've got some strange ideas about how to throw a party, but what the hell. See you in the funny papers."

T.B. slithered over the twitching heap of shark meat sprawled in the doorway. The stairs were just up the hall. He climbed to the roof and slid down a rear fire escape. Up the alley to Paisley Street, and he was free and clear. If any more sharks were waiting in front of the hotel, they'd be waiting there for a while. T.B. meandered north, comparing the various flops. Up the street a canvas sailor boy and a hula dancer in a grass skirt were leaning against a lamppost and fucking on their feet. Nice neighborhood.

T.B. was peering through a fly-specked window into a truly unsavory lobby when the moose with the Luger shot him in the back. This time the moose was standing up close and hit him dead center. The moose turned toward the sailor and the hula dancer in their pool of lamplight. They walked up the sidewalk at top speed and disappeared around a corner.

The street was deserted then. Just the moose and T.B. A light drizzle began to fall. T.B. could feel it wetting the back of his head. The moose knelt down beside him, rolled him over, and frisked him. T.B. thought of his gun and his razors, but putting up a struggle seemed too difficult suddenly. He just wanted to lie here on the sidewalk and go to sleep. But this moose. This crazy moose in the cheap green suit jacket. What was his angle?

The moose flipped open T.B.'s wallet and glared at the driver's license. "T.B. Otherweiss?" he said to himself aloud. "That ain't right. This ain't the guy. What kinda name is that for an octopus anyhow?"

"My name," T.B. croaked.

The moose jumped. "Christ. You scared me."

"So now we're even, huh?"

"Your name is Otherweiss? How come it ain't Octopus? You a foreigner or something?"

"I changed it."

"So you ain't Toby Octopus the insurance investigator?"

"Hell no. Do I look like an insurance investigator?"

"I feel real bad about this. It's all just a misunderstanding."

"So you're not with the Fighting Fish?"

"The who?"

T.B. started to laugh, which hurt so much he groaned. "You should ask a few questions before you go to the trouble of plugging a guy."

"It was no trouble."

"Still you coulda been more careful."

The moose smiled shyly. "Yeah, I coulda. But I'm not too bright. It's part of my colorful character."

"Would it have killed you to find the right octopus, you fucking dim bulb?"

The moose grinned. "I guess not. But for a dim bulb like me, that wouldn't really be in character, would it?" As if to demonstrate the subtlety of his point, he slugged T.B. in the head with his gun butt. The rest of the night got confused.

T.B. touched the tangle of rain-wet ribbons around his mouth. His tongue tasted like a wrought-iron railing. Some moose was carrying him over one shoulder. That explained it. All the ribbons were rushing to his head.

An hour later, and what a long hour it was, T.B. was hanging from the top of a flagpole above the courtyard of an elementary school. Eviscerated. Hung from a couple of flag hooks. Flapping in the cold wet wind. A lavender rag with eyes. Turned inside out. Staring at the streetlights through the back of his own translucent head. 77Hard to think in this condition.

The night was still. No more sirens. No more screaming. T.B. had reached a dead end, three stories off the pavement.

Down by the bank of Silk River, Turtle and Snake climbed the side of a concrete stanchion and ascended a steel web of pylons, girders, and bracing cables. Above them was their lookout fort.

"Hurry!" Turtle shouted. "They're coming closer! I can hear them!"

They reached the fort, a ramshackle wooden box that they'd cobbled together from discarded crates, rusty nails, and baling wire. There was just enough room inside for the two of them to sit together, play cards, and watch the world go by.

They soon saw the monsters. The dog walked wearily up the middle of Seam Expressway toward the bridge. The cat swung from his mouth. They were massive and slow and uncanny, like a dream spilling into the world. The dog knocked down a row of tollbooths and ventured out across the bridge's upper deck.

"They're right over us," marveled Snake.

"I can't see them!" wailed Turtle.

Perhaps the sound of running water roused the cat back to consciousness. Oh how she hated to get wet! Whatever the reason, she suddenly began to yowl and slash and struggle with her captor. The bridge shook like a three-legged card table. The dog lost his footing. The monsters fell from the bridge.

Their twin immensities smashed the pea green surface of the river. The lookout fort was suddenly awash in flying white water. The monsters surfaced and pounded the river with their paws, raising mammoth clouds of spray. The polka-dot cat paddled west across the river, spluttering in disgust. The dog swam after her, grinning from ear to ear, paddling efficiently and enjoying the exercise — a relentless gingham-checked torture machine.

A tugboat draped with truck tires chugged along the center of the channel. It was in the cat's path and had no time to maneuver. Her wake nearly capsized it. Then it got in the dog's way. He showed it all his teeth. It spun in his turbulence. He snatched it out of the water and tossed it over his head.

The tugboat tumbled end over end through the misty air. Ropes, floats, boat hooks, crewmen, everything not tied down hurtled in a loose cloud around the slowly revolving tugboat. Here it came. Snake could see the keel, then the deck, then the keel again. You could even see the white-haired tug captain — his skipper's cap, then his rubber boots, then his cap again. His flailing arms and legs couldn't alter his trajectory. Here he came.

The tugboat and its crew smacked headlong into the webwork of the bridge. Turtle took a blow to the head from a flying tin plate. He didn't quite pass out, but he lost track of things temporarily. Then it was like he woke up.

He looked around. He was drenched and dripping and sitting in the lookout fort, or what remained of it. A boat captain was pancaked against a nearby pylon.

Turtle looked down. Snake was draped across his lap. There was a plank fragment punched through her tail like a javelin, and half of her head was crushed. Turtle made a move to stand up.

"No," said Snake. "Leave me alone. I want to see this." Her good eye was still gazing across the water, watching the monsters as they swam toward the far bank of the river. "I want to see this," she repeated stubbornly.

Turtle sat and rocked his friend in his forelegs. He found himself singing a song he'd been hearing. "The gingham dog and the calico cat, side by side on the table sat. Twas half past twelve, and what do you think? Not one nor the other had slept a wink." He'd forgotten the rest of the words.

Turtle thought about the life Snake led. She didn't go to school. She had no home, no family. Turtle's mother didn't want her around. Turtle didn't even know where she slept or what she ate. She had nothing. He had everything. And now she was hurt, and he didn't know what to do.

Streams of river water cascaded through the bridge, and Turtle wept.

The three-legged cat dragged herself from the pea green river, trailing her pink satin intestines behind her in the mud. 77For a harrowing minute they snagged on a pile of logs. The cat had to backtrack and pull them loose with her mother-of-pearl teeth. She collapsed on the mud flat north of Cellophane Canal.

A rabble of filthy hobo rats crept from their burrows. They approached the fallen cat cautiously, wielding iron clubs and pointed sticks. They poked her, and she didn't move. The bravest rats among them tried to pry one of the green glass eyes from her head. Then the dog climbed from the river and shook himself. The rats took flight.

At last the dog ate his dinner. He ripped out her throat and pulled open her ribcage. He gnawed at leisure on the cotton muscles and packing twine sinews of her dear sweet legs. She was such a good cat.

After eating, the dog ran up and down the riverbank, guarding the corpse from the wild dog packs that haunted his dreams. He'd never actually seen another giant dog like himself. But he knew that they were out there, just waiting to steal his meat.

After patrolling the perimeter, he sat down beside the corpse and gazed at the fullness of the moon balloon and the beauty of the rainbow-spangled heavens. Then he rolled the cat over on her belly and stuck his stiff stuffed weenie into her slot. He raped the corpse with gusto. "Uk uk uk," he said.

"Ik ik ik," said the corpse.

The hands of the clock on the tower of the Eyeglass Bank Building inched toward midnight. The night sky looked down through her crinkled eye folds and winced in revulsion like a bedsheet on a clothesline when a gust of wind comes by. Beyond the badlands, the peaks of the Dollhouse Mountains cracked open their jagged mouths and moaned in pity for the cat. The city's poor few trees, filched from some model train set, wilted in shame. The bells of Crepe Cathedral rang the hour. The wind fell to nothing and held its breath. The colors drained from the stars.

A luminous form, hazy with distance, wavered in the moonlight over Mildew Swamp. It shone with a black light, like a midnight sun descended to the Table Land.

"Look," said Turtle, off across the water, on Scissors Bridge. "Something's coming."

"Turn my head," said Snake. "I can't move."

The form solidified into a figure that walked on legs, though its feet didn't touch the mud. It approached the city, striding across the swamp on legs like stone mesas.

"What?" said Turtle. "What did you say?"

Again Snake whispered the sacred name. "Ragged Anndy."

Anndy raised a foot like a swollen black planet at the end of a blue denim pants leg. The foot levitated across the mud flat and planted itself in the air. A second leg in a red-and-white striped stocking loomed forward. The first two legs were joined by a third, which came to rest between them. The third leg of the tripod was a doubled leg, two legs sewn together. For Ragged Anndy was Siamese twins.

The titanic stuffed goddess strode toward the riverbank. Her feet touched the mud now. Arabesques of frost formed in her footprints. Her heads were halfway to the sky.

Anndy's hair was giant loops of red yarn. Her eyes were four black buttons that glowed with compassion from the centers of radiating lash lines. Each face bore a triangular red nose and mouth of crimson embroidery thread. On the side where her right arm attached, Ann wore a frilly pink pinafore and a starched white apron with deep pockets. On the side where his left arm attached, Andy wore a light blue work shirt, bell-bottom trousers, and a navy blue pea jacket.

Anndy stood directly behind the dog. The dog went on raping the corpse. The water of Silk River squirmed like a flea-infested mattress. The moon balloon deflated herself slightly and crept down the ceiling of the world. Anndy's moon shadow fell across the dog's bent back. The little orange dog raped and raped and raped the little dead cat. "Ugh ugh ugh!" said the dog.

"Ik ik ik," said the corpse.

"Ugh ugh ugh!" said the dog.

"Jesus you're heavy," said the corpse.

Anndy shook her heads and rested her hands on her hips. Her arms bent like sausages, lacking bones. She waited to be noticed. She was fed up to here with these nightly visits to the Table Land, but what choice did she have? The curse lay on her heads just as much as it lay on theirs.

At last the dog noticed Anndy. He yanked his weenie free of the corpse and romped to and fro at the god's feet, yapping and slobbering blissfully. He ducked his head and wagged his gingham tail. Not a thought in his head that he'd misbehaved. Just the fervent undying hope that Anndy had come here to throw a stick for him.

Anndy knelt down and touched the cat's broken neck. She stirred and moaned and opened one swollen eye. She pushed aside the red ribbons that dripped from her brow, using a paw that was just a loop of wire with some cotton hanging off. She mewed piteously to Anndy.

Steam rose from her gaping belly. The air was filled with butcher shop smells, the smells of blood and meat. The smells made no sense in a world of stuffed toys, but the river rats could smell them just the same. Smelling them made the river rats feel very queer. They hadn't smelled meat since their half-remembered days on the material plane — that uncanny realm where all stuffies were forever mute and paralyzed. The river rats scurried deeper into their burrows.

Anndy spoke to his pets, and his voice echoed across the swamp. "It is midnight," he said. The dog cocked his head. "Midnight by the old Dutch clock in the Parlor Behind the Sky," Anndy elaborated.

"Bow wow wow!" said the dog, trying to hold up his end of the conversation.

"Meow?" said the cat, trying to be helpful.

"Do you know why we have come here, little dog?"

"Haven't a clue," the dog answered.

"And you, little cat?"

"Good evening. Boss."

"Do you know why we are here, Ragged Ann and I?"

"Sorry," said the cat. "I just woke up."

Anndy sighed deeply. "So again you have remembered nothing. Again you know nothing of the curse which makes a hell of your lives."

"Now I'm completely lost," said the cat.

"A curse?" said the dog. "Gosh! You mean like an enchantment?"

Anndy spoke again, his voice a shade louder this time, so that it churned up the river water. "What do you think will happen tomorrow night at midnight, little dog, little cat?"

"Can you give us a hint?" asked the cat.

"Tomorrow night at midnight," said Anndy, "we will return to plead with you again."

"Is there something we can do for you?" the dog asked hopefully.

"Anything at all, Boss. You name it," said the cat.

"Again we will plead with you, just as we stand here pleading now. And all because of your curse."

"There's that curse again," muttered the dog.

Anndy raised his voice, and windows broke all over the west side. The Dollhouse Mountains shivered and pulled their heads into their shoulders. "Could you please just stop killing each other every night?! You're keeping the whole house awake! People are trying to sleep for Christ's sake! How can we sleep with the two of you tearing around like that?!"

"We're keeping you awake?" said the dog in astonishment.

"We had no idea," said the cat.

"We'll be quiet as mice," the dog solemnly promised.

"You won't even know we're here," said the cat.

"No more crashing," said the dog.

"No more killing," said the cat.

Anndy rubbed his eyes and yawned. He sat down beside the monsters. "You could lift your curse tonight," he told them. "You could do it so easily. But you don't know how."

"So tell us!" said the dog.

Anndy hung his heads. "We can't. We're forbidden. It's part of the curse."

"How mysterious," mused the cat.

The dog whispered into the cat's tattered ear. "You talk to him. You're smarter than I am."

"Are we keeping you from something?" asked Anndy.

"Nothing important," said the dog. "I was raping her corpse, but we can do that after you leave."

"We won't make any noise," said the cat.

"I'll be in the parlor," said Anndy. "Playing solitaire and drinking warm milk."

"Sweet dreams."

"Nice seeing you."

"Drop in anytime."

"Don't be a stranger."

Ragged Anndy raised his colossal hand and touched the sequined sky. "Let all continue as before," he said, and he sounded as if he meant it. The waterworks shriveled in terror, and fuel tanks hid their faces in their pipes.

Anndy turned and walked back across the swamp, but her feet no longer touched the mud. She parted the silken veil of the night sky, ducked her heads, and stepped through the parting into some larger world beyond.

Everyone in Plush City fell asleep, and I do mean everyone. For hours the place was as dead as a coffin nail. No one came, no one went, nothing moved. While the stuffies slept, the city's ruined buildings and damaged roads and burst pipes and severed power lines regrew themselves like weeds. The cardboard city had no eyes, no thoughts, words, no hands. Yet in the stillness of the night, while the stars twinkled solely for their own amusement, the city quietly rebuilt itself. It happened every night, while the stuffies slept.

The sun sequin rose into the pale blue sky of day and chased away the moon balloon. Certain details of the city had altered overnight, but none of the citizens seemed to notice.

Snake and Turtle went for a stroll in the early morning. There was no school on Saturday, and Snake felt like a walk. Naturally Turtle tagged along. It had rained in the night. The air was cool and clean for a change. Turtle was happy just to be walking beside his friend and talking note of all the different stuffies that they passed.

There went a masked hero in yellow leotards and a green cape. There went an eggplant and a pumpkin. A fox in a beaver coat escorting a headless chicken. A mermaid walking on her tail between a satyr and a sea serpent. And here was a mother kangaroo pushing a stroller with dozens of her cute little two-headed babies bouncing in and out of it.

Snake and Turtle passed a hospital. On a patio out in front, some fire-damaged Dalmatians were sunbathing in lounge chairs, regrowing their skins. A nurse in a white uniform was serving them glasses of lemonade. "Nurses are sexy," said Snake. "I like the little white caps."

"Yeah," said Turtle. Snake rumpled the plush on top of his head. He hated that.

Snake and Turtle passed their neighborhood movie palace, which was showing a Puppetropolitan remake of The Lost World. Turtle was crazy about the movies. He didn't care what was playing.

A porpoise in an eyeshade and sleeve garters was sweeping the sidewalk in front of a hole-in-the-wall tongue store. He looked like a foreigner. Snake wondered why so many foreigners looked so sad. Weren't they happy to be here?

Snake and Turtle walked past the apartment block where Snake lived. They ducked up an alley. Snake stopped under a fire escape. "You hear that?" she said. "That bunny is breaking dishes again. Working up a head of steam for when Teddy gets home, I bet you. That bitch sent Teddy to the hospital last month."

"I wonder why they got married," said Turtle. "They don't got no kids."

Snake and Turtle walked east. The parade of stuffies never ended. There went a llama in a priest's collar. There went a lantern fish and a twelve-legged cow. Part of a Humpty Dumpty. A swan and a vulture. A lion and a headless lion tamer. A punching bag and a little black Sambo. Plush City was like a masquerade ball that never ended.

Turtle wanted to stay here forever.

Edna Pinkbunny stood in her den and ironed her husband's shirts. A complaining electric fan provided a meager breeze while it drowned out Edna's radio. Perspiration dripped from her nose onto the steam iron. It was an ugly iron. The shirts were ugly shirts. Her doll furniture was ugly tasteless doll furniture, and the shoddy pasteboard walls of the apartment were ugly walls.

What killed Edna was that on Teddy's salary as an armed guard at the bank, they should've been able to afford a better place. The problem was Teddy's unfortunate habit of drinking half his paycheck every weekend. Edna imagined the look on Teddy's face if she accidentally dropped this iron on his big smelly foot. It would serve him right.

The radio was tuned to a morning soap opera about glamorous well-paid medical professionals who all worked at Pattern General Hospital. A nurse with a sexy voice was the ice princess of the nursing staff. All the doctors were hot for her, but she treated them like dirt. Edna wanted to be like that.

While Edna daydreamed in the den, Cuddles was in the bathroom, having her way with Fang. Edna ignored the torture chamber parrot laughter and the agonized rodent squeals. She had her own problems.

Cuddles was experimenting with a theory of hers that the sewer pipes beneath the toilet bowl were inhabited by little shit-eating sewer fish. Cuddles was convinced that if she fished in these sub-toilet waters with the proper bait, she could hook one of these sewer fish and capture it for science. She'd constructed a fishing pole from a curtain rod, some dental floss, and a paper clip. Her bait for today was none other than Fang.

Fang couldn't breathe underwater, but Cuddles took account for that. Every couple of minutes she hauled him to the surface. After he caught his breath, he usually started to squeal. But that was easily remedied. Cuddles simply flushed.

"Hamster want a cracker?" said Cuddles.

"Glub," said Fang.

Meanwhile Edna was collecting some cleaning supplies from a kitchen cupboard. She arranged the cans and bottles on the dinner table.

She glanced at the ceiling. The dance instructor upstairs had been playing the same record all morning. That Gopher Sisters number. The big band slid casually from chord to chord, while the trio sang sweet swing harmonies into the stale city air. "Next morning where the two had sat, they found no trace of dog or cat. And some folks think unto this day that burglars stole the pair away."

Edna sat down, put on her glasses, and studied the labels on the cleaning products. With particular attention to the instructions given in case of accidental poisoning.

Doris the Doll turned the corner of Storytime Avenue onto Taffeta. She wore a mauve cloche hat and a topcoat, although it wasn't raining. She clutched her beaded purse as she walked, and fussed nervously with the blonde curls of her wig.

Doris was on her way to Ladybug's bar on the other side of the elevated tracks. Her purse was full of play heroin. Her hair wasn't her hair, and the heroin wasn't her heroin. It belonged to Mama Sloth.

Fucking Syndicate bitches. Doris wanted to sink them all in the harbor in galoshes of cement. She also wanted to go to Candy Land and climb the Licorice Tower. Doris wanted to do a lot of things.

She paused at a newsstand run by a fat old sea cow with a mustache. She loitered on the sidewalk reading headlines. The wooden toys of Ark had invaded Lawn County and slagged hundreds of tin toys. The ceramic toys of Kiln were expected to mobilize before dark. Taxidermia, Inflatia, and the Baked Goods Section were expected to form an alliance for mutual protection. This would trigger a declaration of war from the mayor of Plush City. Fabulous. Giant monsters weren't enough for him. Now he needed a war. Meanwhile the paper dolls of Drawer were preparing to test their new super-bomb.

"This ain't a library," said the sea cow. Doris took off. She had places to go and people to see.

Doris didn't let the city drag her down. When she felt blue, she went to the movies. When she got home from the movies, she sat alone in her smoky apartment and played her records day and night, just to drown out her thoughts. Drinking coffee. Taking pills. Running errands for the scum of the west side. Some life for a nice little Kewpie doll from the Ohio State Fair.

What she really ought to do was slit her wrists. Do it up right. Get out while the going was good.

The sidewalk went on forever. An evangelist was preaching on the radio. Doris could follow the sermon through people's open windows. The priests said that the grown-ups of the material plane created dolls in their own image. But if that was true, then why did the grown-ups let dolls be used as the mute and paralyzed playthings of children. That seemed like truly demonic behavior to Doris.

The priests said that when a good little stuffed toy went to the Burn Pile down there, her soul ascended to the Table Land and was blessed with speech and mobility as a reward for her terrible sufferings down below. Did that make any sense?

What kind of an afterlife was this? People died here. What happened to your soul if you died here? Some second afterlife? To Doris the whole arrangement looked senseless. But very little made sense to Doris anymore. Except for one thing. One thing made lots and lots of sense.

She could end it all. She could go home right now and take all her pills at once. She could dispose of herself and do everybody a favor.

Unseen cymbals crashed behind the blue silk sky. Cold rain fell like funeral veils. The gingham dog was seen on the flatlands, running hard across the hard-pack. Shreds of ripped fabric hung loose from his shanks. Already he was leaking goose down and snow flurries of white pinfeather followed in his wake. He fled south from the Wiggly Mountains. He was making for the city. Already the calico predator of the mountains had chewed off his fine gingham tail. Now she was giving her prey a lead across the flatlands. That was how the cat operated. She was playful. She made a game of the thing. The dog would be just as gutted by sundown.

The dog's eye stitchings were red, and his ribs showed through his pelt. He'd been hiding in a cave for days, with nothing to eat but bats and centipedes. The cat had flushed him into the open perhaps an hour ago. He was far too exhausted to fight back. Perhaps he'd find a new hiding place in the cardboard city of the small folk.

A crowd of stuffies had gathered on Scissors Bridge. Their binoculars were trained on the Wiggly Mountains. The calico cat was tearing down a gully, covering ground at an incredible rate.

The dog didn't stand a chance. He was only the size of a freight truck, and the cat was bigger than a battleship. She'd run him down, humiliate him, tie him up like a steer in his own yanked-out packing twine, flay his skin, eat his tongue, and then hump his cadaver in the dead of night, while howling to wake the dead. And why not? The dog deserved it. The cat couldn't recall just what he'd done, but that wasn't important. He was guilty as sin, and he'd take what was coming to him.

That night the cat would cripple and devour her perpetual playmate, according to the ancient curse that neither monster could break, since neither could remember it. And at midnight Anndy would return to the Table Land with his questions and her impatience. And as usual the god's monstrous pets would try to follow their master's train of thought, as a dog might chase a car. But their answers to Anndy's questions would be stupid, as stupid as stupid could be, as stupid as the moronic celluloid smile on the face of a mute and paralyzed stuffed animal.

So things went in Plush City. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, the dog had hunted the cat. On Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday, the cat had exacted her revenge. Next week the schedule would reverse itself, just as regular as a seesaw or a hobbyhorse or a metronome. Just as regular as the pendulum of the old Dutch clock in the Parlor Behind the Sky.

So nothing would ever change in Plush City, except in the way that a seesaw changes — back and forth, up and down. Which is really no change at all.

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Чепмэн Степан Revenge of the Calico Cat

Stepan Chapman Revenge of the Calico Cat