Snarky, Tinky, Enver and Stumpy followed the balloon head woman.
"What the hell is a Balloon Fight Club?" asked Snarky to no one in particular.
Stumpy spoke up. "The first rule of Balloon Fight Club is..."
Snarky punched his shoulder. "Oh, cut it out."
They all looked around at the place, which wasn't very helpful, as it was dark and gloomy and filled with what they hoped were cobwebs. Twisted torches on the walls flickered but failed to provide much in the way of illumination. The balloon woman squeaked as she floated ahead of them.
"Hurry up! Everyone's waiting," she said. "By the way, my name is Madam Badham."
The corridor curved a few times and they dodged a few piles of fallen stone, stones that were covered in big black scratch marks and must have come from the ceiling, except that there were no holes in the ceiling. They swore they saw disembodied eyes following them, but when they turned around to get a better look, they disappeared. A sudden harsh scream penetrated the darkness, causing them all to jump.
"Don't worry," said Madam Badham. "That's probably just someone who lost a fight. Or maybe someone who won."
Finally, after what seemed like half an eternity, during which their feet crunched things they really didn't want to discover, the cramped corridor opened up into an enormous cavernous room. It was full of odd people, each odder than the last. A man with two noses. A woman with three noses. A donkey with a hand for a tail. Some sort of small giraffe with target eyes. Several people who looked normal but vaguely unpleasant. A couple of teenagers with really disgusting pimples. And lording over all, was a tall, spindly man who seemed to be made of shadows and whispers.
"It's one of those creeps I saw before!" exclaimed Snarky. "They followed me from the hotel."
"That," said Madam Badham, turning to face the quartet,"is Sir Lord Mister Tweth. He is the ringmaster, if you will."
"So, uh, what do you expect us to do?" asked Enver. "Piss and shit some more? I think we're all out."
Tinky coughed. "I've heard of this. It's a brutal underground fighting club. Battle to the death. With balloons."
Stumpy laughed his ass off. "Balloons? How can you fight with balloons? They don't hurt. All you might get is a little shock from static electricity!"
Madam Badham fixed them with a glare, or as close as you can get with a face drawn with black marker.
"The balloons," she said,"are full of sulphuric acid. If they burst..." She tilted her head in a way that suggested raised eyebrows.
"Doesn't the acid just eat through the balloon?" asked Snarky. "And how can you talk with a drawn on face? How can a balloon talk? And aren't these acid death balloons related to you or something? How can you let them be used like this?"
"SILENCE!" thundered Sir Lord Mister Tweth. The entire room shut up as if the sound itself had been sucked out. The only sound was a creepy papery whispering sound.
He continued. "We are gathered here today for the final battle of the season. Our champion against the champion of the newcomers. I have been watching them for a while now, my spies gathering knowledge in various places and times, and I have decided who shall fight."
Our foursome huddled together, a tight ball of terrified yarn. Snarky stood out, being tall, while Tinky, Stumpy and Enver clustered around him, smaller roots of the big tree. Snarky hunched down to make himself less noticeable, which only caused the others to squish down even smaller. "Stupid midgets!" he muttered.
Somewhere a drum boomed.
Tweth raised a twisted green stick. He looked around at the massed audience, which had to be in the thousands in the giant room, some close but most on top of various bits of broken rock, some of which were small and some of which were huge. There were no medium-sized broken rocks. In the distance someone cheered, but it was cut off in mid-cheer.
The drum boomed again.
"Jeez," muttered Stumpy. "Milking it!"
"Shall it be---" boomed Tweth,"Stumpy Cucamonga? A man with enormous feet and an even bigger reservoir of courage?"
"Who, me?" squeaked Stumpy.
"Or! Shall it be Enver Lovebagge, formerly known as Enver Dirtbagge, a man with no scruples and a talent for hidden weapons?"
"Damn! Lost them in that weird bar!" said Enver.
"Or! Shall it be Tinky Dingbat, who may be small, but that just means he can burrow in your ear and chew on your brain?"
"Hey! I'm not that small," grumped Tinky.
"Or! Shall it be Snarky Snapdragon, a man who in a former life was an assassin for organized crime and who made his own mother cry by breaking her legs and feeding her beloved lapdog Snozzy to an escaped boa constrictor?"
"That wasn't me! That was my identical twin brother," said Snarky, looking away.
A loud roar broke out. "Snarky! Snarky! Snarky!"
"Fuck, of course it's the tall guy who literally stands out," muttered Snarky. The others looked incredibly relieved. A small fight broke out a few steps away between a lamp with fangs and a sabre tooth tiger armed with a knife. The knife clanged and sparked against the lamp, while it ducked and sank its fangs into the tiger's neck, causing blood to cascade upwards, splashing on a flying mouse, which drowned and plummeted to the ground with a loud splat. The tiger, in its dying moments, slashed the power cord of the lamp, causing a flash of blue electrical light, electrocuting both of them.
Madam Badham nodded, and ugly tree people grabbed our four, with the one holding Snarky shoving him into an open space that served as a ring. It was stained with blood and covered in a layer of old bones, most of which had been ground into dust, but some splinters still stuck up here and there. Half of a skull grinned at him from the ground. A balloon was thrust into his hand and he was shoved into the ring.
From the other side the crowd parted, and the champion walked into view. He was brutal, but his eyes were sensitive. His jaw was squared, but rounded. He had scars on his face but they were more intriguing than disfiguring. His arms and chest were rippling with muscles, and his eyes were red with rage. He, too, had a balloon in his hands.
He also looked just like a messed up Snarky, who stared in disbelief.
"Malarkey! My brother!" he yelled.
Malarkey Snapdragon's eyes became less red and more blue. "Snarky? Is that you? I thought there couldn't be more than one person with the name Snarky Snapdragon!"
They both rushed to each other and hugged.
"Dude, it's been at least fifteen years! You look pretty much the same except for the bad haircut," said Malarkey.
"Well, I haven't had time...you look a lot different. That scar on your left cheek is new." Snarky frowned. "Has it been fifteen years? It doesn't feel like it. More like fifteen days."
"You know, I was wondering about that. I can't remember much recently...everything's vague now. I thought it was because of all the fights."
"Since when did you fight? You always..." Snarky stopped talking. The crowd had gone silent again. Tweth banged his stick.
"Fight!" roared Tweth.
"Fuck that shit!" yelled Malarkey and Snarky at the same time.
Snarky turned to his travelling companions. "Guys! Come on, let's get out of here." They raced to him. He turned to his brother. "I hope you know a way out of this."
"No problem, bro." Malarkey ran to Tweth and banged his stick with the balloon. It exploded and acid soaked the stick, which began smoking and drinking. A bright blue light shone. Tweth turned away, hurt by the glare. He slipped a pair of cheap sunglasses on and screamed at the room.
"Get them! Do not let them escape!"
The crowd, in fact, parted and let the five escapees run away to the other side of the chamber. They were there to watch fights, not participate in them, not counting the occasional skirmish. It was the big social event of the season, a place to see and be seen, to flaunt the latest in bedraggled fashion. Let Sir Lord Mister Tweth yell all he wanted, the shadowy jerk, he wasn't the boss. They just tolerated him because he let them use his big special room for events at a cheap rate. Hell, there was a smaller room a few miles away that was just as good, but you couldn't bring your larger pets and the bathroom facilities were simply atrocious.
One keener decided to curry favour with Tweth by trying to trip someone, but all he got for his efforts was his leg stepped on and broken.
"This way!" yelled Malarkey, pointing to a hole in the wall. "It leads outside!"
The five of them ran to the wall, with Tweth in the background screaming like a little kid. He pointed his stick at them as if it was magic, but of course it was just a cheap stick he found in a shop somewhere that he thought looked cool. He choked in rage and fell to the ground. People near him looked away in embarrassment. A balloon nearby popped and Madam Badham burst into tears.
An old woman with too much hair muttered,"In the old days, the elder gods threw much better parties and when they had tantrums, people died and mountains fell. These young people..."
Malarkey raced through the door and the others followed.
"I hope he knows what he's doing," said Enver.
The passageway was as dark and murky as the one they had come through, but with no spooky eyes. Just spiders. Lots and lots of spiders. The spiders were startled, though, and fled up lines of web to safer places near the roof. The passage was slightly uphill, and all you could hear was the flapping of feet and the panting of the frankly out of shape runners.
"Is it much farther?" asked Stumpy, his feet smacking against the hard flat ground.
"Just up ahead," said Malarkey. He was the fastest runner, but the passage was narrow and it was hard to move. It narrowed even more and then they saw a light. They sucked in their guts and squeezed through, only to find themselves on a small ledge on the side of a mountain. They crowded together uncomfortably.
"So how are we supposed to get off this ledge?" asked Snarky, his eyelid twitching.
Malarkey looked down. "We climb." He pointed to some ragged bushes growing from the slopes. "It's not like it's a vertical face. It's pretty easy, with plenty of things to grab onto. And it's not down too far to the valley. The only thing is that the bushes are a little loose. They're really old and not sure if they want to stay on the mountain." He cocked an ear. "We'd better hurry. I think we were followed."
Sure enough, creepy sounds were heard from the narrow passage in the mountain, echoing as the sound was squeezed through cobwebs and rock. Malarkey went first, expertly rappelling down, followed by Snarky, who was motivated more by a determination to get away than by any fear. Tinky just leaped on his back, and Stumpy scrambled down after. Enver paused a moment, hearing something behind him. He turned back to the opening and his mouth opened as if to say something, then with a start, turned back to the bushes. As he was about to climb down, a long arm shot out of the mountain crack and grabbed his foot. He yelled and slipped, causing some loose stones to tumble down. The arm, covered in veins and hair, pulled him slowly back. Enver struggled and dislodged some larger stones, which fell down the mountainside with a slow, low roar. He was pulled across the ledge and into the crack, his fingernails scratching on the rock. He disappeared with a muted scream.
On the mountainside below the ledge, the disturbed rocks fell. They had not moved in centuries, and they took this opportunity to lustily bounce against the face. Stumpy, the last to go over, looked up with horror. "Hey guys---".
With a dusty, ancient thump, the four climbers were knocked off the mountainside, tearing at the bushes who decided that, yes, after all, it was time to let go.
Silhouetted against the shadows of the setting sun, they hung suspended in the cool air for a long, cold moment, before starting the drop to the valley floor.
...to be continued!
