Free Cannibal Dwarf Detective: An Ephemeral Beardening by Hunter Wiseman, Hayden Wiseman Page B

as he says the words.
No one makes for the door.
    “He’s just a sick old man,” the
crayon vendor says. “Hey, old dude. Go be sick in a gutter somewhere. We don’t
want you here.”
    “I’ve had a long day. I deserve a
smoke.”
    Suddenly, the old janitor-wizard is
projectile vomiting bark chips and shards of wood. Several people are impaled.
Three of them are vampires and immediately ash. The fabric in the seating is
shredded, windows are shattered and blood begins pooling up around the bodies
of the dead, non-vamp customers.
    “Wh-who the hell are you!?” The
crayon vendor throws his polishing rag down as violently as the weight of the
cloth will allow.
    The wizard pulls small chunks of bark
dust from his beard.
    “They call me Go,” he says. “I used
to be a member of the Ron-“
    But he cuts himself off before he can
finish saying the name of the only group in this book that starts with Ron.
    As he turns towards the crayon vendor
another long jet of wooden vomit erupts from his lungs and shreds the man like
cheese through a grater. Everyone in the bar is dead, but at least his limbs are
back to normal.
    Go goes over to a barstool and grabs
an emerald green crayon from a container and puts it to his lips. He snaps his
thumb and index finger together and a small blue flame springs forth.
    “Worst smoke I’ve ever had.”
     
    The next morning Go wakes up without
pants in a pile of trash bags. This is often the case. He stands, grabs a bag
and empties it of its contents and then wraps it around his waist. Somewhere in
the tower, someone is making a mess. As janitor, it’s his job to clean up.
    He walks a while, setting fire to
random people and shooting lightning out of his eyes at piles of trash, which
mostly disintegrate, but often leave a rain of material drifting in the air
behind him. He never looks back.
    “Clean enough, meat bags.”
    Go ventures to the tippy
top of the tower again. He looks out at the vast desert and starts casting
shadow puppets against the ten suns.
     
     
     

Part XIII: Full Frontal
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 17
    Jeac’s shark-marine barrels towards
the tower at no speed whatsoever, because, it has no propulsion system, so he
spends nearly a week pushing it across the desert trying to get home. After a
while, he gets tired and climbs inside his vehicle to rest. It looks like he’s
being eaten by a sewn-together shark man.
    Teeth keep scraping against his armor
so he busts them all out and puts them in a small bag, made from loose flesh.
Save for eight of the teeth which he mounts over his knuckles.
    “Razor-knucks,” he thinks. “Always
wanted some of these.”
    Even though he’s just come up with
them on the spot and has never before thought of making them.
    He eats the shark corpse.
    All it’s doing is taking up space and
when he pushes it, it moves, at most, a foot at a time. Once he’s done feeding
he starts sprinting as fast as his tired noodle legs will allow. It only takes
a few minutes for him to reach one of the many doorways leading into the
under-city of the tower.
    Meanwhile, high above, a couple Ronin
sit in chairs and laugh about how they’ve just watched a dwarf run in circles
for three weeks straight.
    Jeac kicks in the door and rushes
through Mutant Market, a gloomy place populated by creatures that trade in
organs for cardboard to build shanties. The light beaming through the door
behind him blinds three of the mutants and he ducks behind a poorly constructed
stand with severed feet hanging from it. Mud kicks up behind him as he hardcore
dances his way across the market. Mutants screech and howl in the darkness.
    Finally, Jeac reaches an out of
service elevator and starts shimmying up the cable. It seems to go on forever,
but he eventually reaches what is typically referred to as the “ground floor”
and where the A.M.M.D garage is housed. He passes cautiously through the
A.M.M.D department building and to the central stair and starts up