The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies Read online

  THE BATTLE OF THE

  RED HOT PEPPER

  WEENIES

  AND OTHER WARPED AND CREEPY TALES

  STARSCAPE BOOKS BY DAVID LUBAR

  Novels

  Flip

  Hidden Talents

  True Talents

  Story Collections

  The Curse of the Campfire Weenies, and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  In the Land of the Lawn Weenies, and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  Invasion of the Road Weenies, and Other Warped and Creepy Tales

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in these stories

  are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE BATTLE OF THE RED HOT PEPPER WEENIES AND OTHER WARPED AND CREEPY TALES

  Copyright © 2009 by David Lubar

  Reader’s Guide Copyright © 2009 by Tor Books

  All rights reserved.

  “Bad Luck” originally appeared in Sunscripts, 2004.

  “Time Out” originally appeared in Boy’s Life, May 2004.

  “Braces” originally appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, September 2007.

  “Just Like Me” originally appeared in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, March 2007.

  A Starscape Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-6269-8

  For M. Jerry Weiss, Helen Weiss, and Don Gallo,

  the true champions of the short story

  CONTENTS

  A Brief Word of Introduction

  All the Rage

  Frankendance

  The Ratty Old Bumbershoot

  Dear Author

  The Wizard’s Mandolin

  Into the Wild Blue Yonder

  Yackity-Yak

  Wish Away

  The Department Store

  The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies

  Just Like Me

  What’s Eating the Vegans?

  Let’s Have a Big Hand for Gerald

  Bird Shot

  The Princess and the Pea Brain

  Petro-fied

  Time Out

  Galactic Zap

  The Taste of Terror

  The Cat Almost Gets a Bath

  Yesterday Tomorrow

  Take a Whack at This

  King of the Hill

  Book Banning

  Braces

  Turkey Calls

  Reel

  Bad Luck

  Rattled Nerves

  Smart Little Suckers

  Overdue onto Others

  Put on Your Happy Face

  Moods

  Keep Your Spirits Up

  Sting, Where Is Thy Death?

  A Word or Two About These Stories

  About the Author

  Reader’s Guide

  A BRIEF WORD OF INTRODUCTION

  I need to thank several people, and apologize to a whole lot of others. Feel free to skip this part if you aren’t one of them—though you’ll never know for sure unless you keep reading. It’s difficult to get one book of short stories published. The fact that I have four is a miracle. The miracle workers are my publisher, Kathleen Doherty; my editor, Susan Chang; and my publicist at Tor, Dot Lin. I’m a lucky guy. My wife, Joelle, and daughter, Alison, gave me lots of feedback for these stories, and never complained too much about being in the presence of a compulsive story writer. More luck on my part.

  Bill Mayer, the artist who draws those amazing Weenies, deserves a lot of credit for the popularity of these collections. It would be impossible to name all the people who work to get the book from me to you, including distributors, booksellers, and the guys in the ware house, but it would also be impossible not to thank one person in particular. Ed Masessa has done amazing things for the Weenies.

  The teachers and librarians who share my stories with their students deserve my thanks, as do all of you young readers who’ve told your friends or your teachers about my books.

  Speaking of young readers, I guess this is as good a place as any to apologize to all the seventh-grade boys who might not be amused by a certain line in one of the stories. (You’ll know which line I mean when you read it.) I was just kidding. Honestly.

  Onward. Enjoy the stories. Don’t read them in the dark. You won’t be able to see the words.

  THE BATTLE OF THE

  RED HOT PEPPER

  WEENIES

  AND OTHER WARPED AND CREEPY TALES

  ALL THE RAGE

  Kieffer Loomis was the only kid in our whole school who never got angry. He was so calm, it was spooky. I’m no hothead myself, but life dumps tons of bad stuff on everybody. Some of it isn’t fair. Some of it is just plain rotten. For example, I yelled at my little sister Jilly last week when she colored all over my library book with her crayons. She started to cry, which made Mom angry, which got me in trouble, which made me even angrier.

  I didn’t stay angry forever. And Mom took the library fine out of Jilly’s allowance. So it all worked out. But I’d never seen Kieffer even raise his voice.

  There are a couple of ways to deal with any behavior that’s too weird to ignore. You can figure it out, or you can change it. I started by trying to figure it out. Two weeks ago, I went over to Kieffer at lunch and asked, “How come you never get angry?”

  He looked at me like that was a stupid question. “What do you mean?”

  “You never lose your temper,” I said. “How do you stay so calm?”

  Kieffer shrugged. “I guess that’s just the way I am. When something bothers me, I swallow it.”

  “Swallow it?”

  “Yup. You should give it a try.”

  That didn’t sound like it would work. But I had a chance to find out for myself the next day. When Bobby Thugger pushed me down on the playground, I sat there and tried to swallow my anger. I could feel it swelling in my throat. Nope. I knew right away that it wouldn’t work. My anger was too large, and my throat was too small. I got up and pushed Bobby. That felt a lot better. So much for swallowing my anger.

  As I said, there are two ways to deal with weird behavior. One way is to ask about it. The other is to change it. Or, in this case, do something that most boys are really good at—see how far you can push it. I don’t know who came up with the idea, but this morning a bunch of us—me, Dwight, Alan, Richie, and Patrick—decided that our only goal in life was to make Kieffer lose his temper. We were going to break his calm, big-time.

  “No matter what, don’t give up,” Dwight said as we waited in front of the school.

  “Nope. Total attack,” Alan said.

  “But it can’t look planned,” I said. “It has to look like accidents.”

  “There he is.” Patrick pointed across the lawn at Kieffer, who’d just reached the school yard.

  “Me first.” Alan charged toward Kieffer at full speed. When he got close, he shot his hands out and shouted, “Tag! You’re it!” He sho
ved Kieffer harder than I’d ever seen anyone get tagged outside of a professional wrestling ring. The poor guy flew at least five or six feet before he landed on his butt. After landing, he slid a couple more feet. By then, Alan had dashed away.

  Kieffer looked around like he had no idea what had just hit him. His face grew expressionless for a moment. His jaw clenched, like he was going to shout. Then, even from a distance, I could tell he was swallowing. It looked like he was choking down a golf ball.

  You’re doomed, I thought. That had just been a warm-up. We had the whole day ahead of us. I ran to the wood shop and grabbed a screwdriver while the teacher wasn’t watching, then headed for the lockers. I jammed the blade into the edge of Kieffer’s locker and twisted, hoping I could mess up the door enough so it wouldn’t open. Then I backed off and waited.

  It turned out I did a pretty good job jamming things up. Kieffer tried to open the locker. It wouldn’t budge. He raised his fist like he was going to punch the door. Then he sighed, swallowed, and walked off.

  Life grew worse and worse for Kieffer throughout the morning. After lunch, we got other kids involved so he wouldn’t suspect our group. By the end of the day, the whole class was taking turns making him miserable.

  Still, amazingly, he swallowed every bit of his anger.

  Maybe we just couldn’t get mean enough. But on the way out of the building, Alan did the tag thing again. This time, he did it on the stairs, catching Kieffer from behind.

  I winced as Kieffer went tumbling. As much as I wanted to see him explode, this was a bit too rough.

  I guess the fall had stunned him. He lay there on his back, staring up at the clouds. Nobody moved. Finally, I stepped forward to give him a hand. I figured that would be a nice thing to do, even if the guys got mad at me.

  Just as I was about to reach out and say something friendly, I noticed Kieffer’s lip was twitching. His jaw moved like he was trying to swallow, but his head jerked like something dry and jagged was caught in his throat.

  Maybe we hadn’t lost, after all. The anger was finally too much for him to swallow. But he hunched his shoulders, clenched his fists, and gulped. I could swear I saw a pulsing lump slide down his throat—a big wad of swallowed anger, moving like a fat rat through a slim snake. I guess Kieffer’s anger still wasn’t too big to swallow.

  But it was too big to stomach.

  Kieffer’s shirt rippled, like someone was punching at it from the inside. He stared down at his gut and moved his lips. Faintly, I heard him say, “Oh, no…”

  The anger burst out—all of it—years of swallowed anger. It exploded from inside him. Kieffer’s anger was dark and wet, with shiny scales that hurt to look at. It had claws like saw blades and teeth that dripped green venom. As it swelled, it let out a howl that made my eyes bleed and my teeth crack.

  Some of the crowd froze, or dropped to the ground. Some turned to run. It didn’t matter. Kieffer’s anger was everywhere. As I spun away, I felt a burning slash rip across my back. My legs went numb. I fell. I dragged myself a foot or two with my hands and elbows, then gave up and flopped on my chest.

  My vision was fading. I could see Kieffer, not far away. His eyes were glazing over. The screams all around me had turned into whimpers. Anger had destroyed all of us.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  Kieffer smiled.

  How could he possibly be happy? “What?” I asked. That was as much as I could manage to say.

  “It felt good to let all that anger out,” Kieffer said.

  I’ll bet it did. As I closed my eyes and sank into the darkness, I realized the weirdest thing. I wasn’t angry at all.

  FRANKENDANCE

  “What’s wrong, Sunshine?” my dad asked me. My name is Lily, but he likes to call me names like Sunshine and Princess.

  “Nobody asked me to the dance,” I told him. “Every other girl in my class has a date. Even Sabrina Zimanski, who spits when she talks and drools when she breathes. It’s the first school dance ever, and nobody wants to take me.”

  “Oh, stop worrying your pretty head,” Dad said. “I’m sure you’ll get a date.”

  “No, I won’t. I’ll never get a date.”

  “Yes, you will. I promise. When is this dance?”

  “A week from Saturday.”

  “That soon? I’d better get back to the lab. I have a lot to do.” Dad dashed for the attic steps. He had a lab up there where he invented things.

  I cried myself to sleep that night as thunder shook the walls of my bedroom and rain fell like my own tears.

  The night before the dance, Dad insisted on taking me to the mall to buy a new dress.

  “But I’m not going to the dance,” I said.

  “I promise you, you’ll go,” Dad said.

  I let him buy me the dress. I figured I could wear it some other day.

  “Try on your dress,” Dad told me on Saturday evening, half an hour before the dance.

  “No. That would just make me sad,” I said.

  “It would make me happy,” Dad said. “Please.”

  I went to my room and changed. When I got back, there was a big guy in a black sweater standing next to Dad. As I got closer, I saw that he had one blue eye and one brown eye. His ears were different sizes, and one of them was sort of rotated a bit so the earlobe pointed toward his nose. At least I think it was a nose. It was in the right place, and had two holes, but beyond that, the resemblance was kind of weak.

  “This is Stitchy,” Dad said. “He’s taking you to the dance.”

  Stitchy smiled and waved at me. I noticed his little finger and ring finger were switched.

  I sniffed the air. Something rotten made my nose twitch. It reminded me of the pack of month-old hamburger meat I found in the back of the fridge last year. “He smells.”

  “You’re in seventh grade,” Dad said. “All the boys smell. Right?”

  I had to admit that Dad had a point. By the end of the evening, the whole gym would smell like the inside of an empty clam chowder can that had been sitting in the sun. “Do you know how to dance?” I asked Stitchy.

  He nodded, grunted, then twitched like he’d been hit by lightning.

  “Okay—let’s go.” Why not? He was still better-looking than most of the boys in my class, except for Brandon Kratchweiler. He’s totally gorgeous. Not that he even knows I’m alive.

  “Have a wonderful time,” Dad said.

  “We’ll try.”

  We headed out. Stitchy actually held the door for me. This might work, I thought. Though I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to dance with him.

  The school was only three blocks from my house, but Stitchy didn’t walk very quickly. I guess it would have been easier for him if his legs were the same length. The left one was longer, so he kept angling toward the road. I had to turn him back every time he reached the curb. By the time we got to the school, the gym was already crowded.

  Nobody paid any attention to us. That was fine. I found an empty table and started to sit down, but Stitchy held up a hand to stop me. Then he pulled out a chair and pointed to the seat.

  He waited until after I sat down to take his own seat. I watched the other kids. Everyone was dancing to a fast song. When the music stopped, Brandon Kratchweiler strolled over to my table, along with a couple of his friends.

  Brandon pointed at Stitchy. “Where’d you dig him up?”

  I didn’t say anything. It was hard to talk, or even think of any words, when I was this close to Brandon.

  Brandon smiled at me. “You make a nice couple….”

  I tried to get my lungs to help me say, “Thank you.”

  “A real nice couple,” Brandon said. “A couple of total losers.” His smile shifted to a smirk. Behind him, his friends laughed.

  As a different pressure crushed my lungs, Brandon turned toward Stitchy and said, “Man, how can you even show your face? That’s one weird-looking nose.”

  Stitchy moved faster than I’d ever seen him move before. He shot up
from his seat and grabbed the top of Brandon’s head in one hand. It looked like when those professional basketball players palm a ball. Stitchy lifted Brandon straight up. As Brandon kicked and screamed, Stitchy grabbed Brandon’s nose with his other hand.

  “No, Stitchy, don’t do it!” I shouted. No, wait—that’s a lie. To be honest, I pretty much whispered it.

  Stitchy yanked real hard.

  whatever sound Brandon’s nose made must have been pretty sickening. Luckily, Brandon’s scream drowned it out.

  Stitchy dropped Brandon, turned toward me, and held out his left hand. He pointed at the nose in his palm; then he pointed toward home and made a sewing motion.

  “Sure, I suppose Dad could put it on for you,” I said. “But I kind of like you the way you are.”

  Stitchy raised one eyebrow. I guess he raised it too hard, because it fell off.

  I picked up the eyebrow and put it in my purse. “Really. You don’t need to change. You’re perfect without that snooty old nose.”

  Stitchy raised the other eyebrow. It stayed on. I nodded.

  Stitchy tossed Brandon’s nose over his shoulder. It landed in the punch bowl. Brandon, who had stopped screaming but was still moaning and whimpering a lot, raced after it. I gave Stitchy a napkin so he could wipe his hand.

  The DJ put on a slow record. “Come on, Stitchy,” I said, “let’s dance.”

  Stitchy and I walked out to the dance floor. He held me close. So I held him close, and danced. We moved in slow circles—clockwise, of course.