No. Not a red rope. Those were Willie's intestines.

"Help me, Mick!"

Without thinking, Mick the Mick reached out a hand and grabbed Willie's duodenum. He squeezed, tight as he could, and Willie farted.

"It hurts, Mick! Being disemboweled hurts!"

A bone-shaking roar, from behind them. The T-Rex had lost interest in the asteroid and was sniffing at the newly spilled blood, his sofa-sized head only a few meters away and getting closer. Mick the Mick could smell its breath, reeking of rotten meat and bad oral hygiene and dooky.

No, the dooky was coming from Willie. Pouring out like brown shaving cream.

Mick the Mick released his friend's innards and wiped his hand on Willie's shirt. The pink flower made a pbbbthh sound and did the same, without the wiping the hand part.

"I gotta put this stuff back in." Willie began scooping up guts and twigs and rocks and shoving them into the gaping hole in his belly.

Mick the Mick figured Willie was in shock, or perhaps even stupider than he'd originally surmised. He considered warning Willie about the infection he'd get from filling himself with dirt, but there were other, more pressing, matters at hand.

The asteroid now took up most of the horizon, and the heat from it turned the sweat on Mick the Mick's body into steam. They needed to get out of here, and fast. If only there was someplace to hide.

Something scurried over Mick the Mick's foot and he flinched, stomping down. Crushed under his heel was something that looked like a beaver. The animal kind. Another proto-beaver beelined around its dead companion, heading through the underbrush into...

"It's a hole, Willie! I think it's a cave!"

Mick the Mick pushed aside a large fern branch and squatted down. The hole led to a diagonalish path, dark and rocky, deep down into the earth.

"It's a hole, Willie! I think it's a cave!"

"You said that, Mick!"

"That's an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep."

Mick the Mick watched as two more lizards, a giant mosquito, and more beaver things poured into the cave, escaping the certain extinction the asteroid promised.

"That's an echo, Willie! Hole must go down deep."

"You're repeating yourself, Mick!"

"I'm not repeating myself!" Mick yelled.

"Yes you are!"

"No I'm not!"

"I'm not repeating myself!"

"Yes you are!"

"No I'm not!"

"You just did!"

"I'm not, Willie!"

"I'm hurt bad, Mick!"

"I'm not, Willie!"

"I said I'm hurt, Mick! Not you!"

Mick the Mick decided not to pursue this line of conversation anymore. Instead, he focused on moving the big outcropping of rock partially obscuring the cave's entrance. If he could budge it just a foot or two, he could fit into the cave and maybe save himself.

Mick the Mick put his shoulder to the boulder, grunting with effort. Slowly, antagonizingly slowly, it began to move.

"You got your cell phone, Mick? You should maybe call 911 for me. Tell them to bring some st.i.tches."

Just a little more. A little bit more...

"I think my stomach just fell out. What's a stomach look like, Mick? This looks like a kidney bean."

Finally, the rock broke away from the base with a satisfying crack. But rather than rolling to the side, it teetered, and then dropped down over the hole, sealing it like a manhole cover.

Mick the Mick began to cry.

"Do kidneys look like kidney beans, Mick?" Willie made a smacking sound. "Doesn't taste like beans. Or kidneys. Hey, the T-Rex is back. He doesn't look distracted no more. You think he took is medication?"

The T-Rex opened its mouth and reared up over Mick the Mick's head, blotting out the sky. All Mick the Mick could see was teeth and tongue and that big dangly thing that hangs in the back of the throat like a punching bag.

"Read to him, Mick. When Nana reads to me, I go to sleep."

The book. They needed to escape this time period. Maybe go into the future, to before Nana baked the cake so they could stop her.

Mick the Mick lifted the Really, Really, Really Old Ones and squinted at it. His hands shook, and his vision swam, and all the vowels on the page looked exactly the same and the consonants looked like pretzel sticks and the hair still left on his comb-over was starting to singe and the T-Rex's jaws began to close and another one of those pink flowers leaned in took a big bite out of Little Mick and the Twins but he managed to sputter out: "OTKIN ADARAB UTAALK!"

Another near-t.u.r.d experience and then they were excreted into a room with a television and a couch and a picture window. But the television screen was embedded - or growing out of?-a toadstoollike thing that was in turn growing out of the floor. The couch looked funny, like who'd sit on that? And the picture window looked out on some kind of nightmare jungle.

And then again, maybe not so weird.

No, Mick the Mick thought. Weird. Very weird.

He looked at Willie.

And screamed.

Or at least tried to. What came out was more like a croak.

Because it wasn't Willie. Not unless Willie had grown four extra eyes - two of them on stalks - and sprouted a fringe of tentacles around where he used to have a neck and shoulders. He now looked like a conical turkey croquette that had been rolled in seasoned breadcrumbs before baking and garnished with live worms after.

The thing made noises that sounded like, "Mick, is that you?" but spoken by a turkey croquette with a mouth full of linguini.

Stranger still, it sounded a little like Willie. Mick the Mick raised a tentacle to scratch his - Whoa! Tentacle?

Well, of course a tentacle. What did he expect?

He looked down and was surprised to see that he was encased in a breadcrumbed, worm-garnished turkey croquette. No, wait, he was a turkey croquette.

Why did everything seem wrong, and yet simultaneously at the same time seem not wrong too?

Just then another six-eyed, tentacle-fringed croquette glided into the room. The Willie-sounding croquette said, "Hi, Nana." His words were much clearer now.

Nana? Was this Willie's Nana?

Of course it was. Mick the Mick had known her for years.

"There's an unpleasant man at the door who wants to talk to you. Or else."

"Or else what?"

A new voice said, "Or else you two get to eat cloacal ca.s.seroles, and guess who donates the cloacas?"

Mick the Mick unconsciously crossed his tentacles over his cloaca. In his twenty-four years since budding, Mick the Mick had grown very attached to his cloaca. He'd miss it something awful.

A fourth croquette had entered, followed by the two biggest croquettes Mick the Mick had ever seen. Only these weren't turkey croquettes, these were chipped-beef croquettes. This was serious.

The new guy sounded like Nate the Nose, but didn't have a nose. And what was a nose anyway?

"Oh, no," Willie moaned. "I don't want to eat Mick's cloaca."

"I meant your own, jerk!" the newcomer barked.

"But I have a hernia -"

"Shaddap!"

Mick the Mick recognized him now: Nate the Noodge, pimp, loan shark, and drug dealer. Not the sort you leant your bike to.

Wait ... what was a bike?

"What's up, Nate?"

"That brick of product I gave you for delivery. I had this sudden, I dunno, bad feeling about it. A frisson of malaise and apprehension, you might say. I just hadda come by and check on it, knome sayn?"

The brick? What brick?

Mick the Mick had a moment of panic - he had no idea what Nate the Noodge was talking about.

Oh, yeah. The product. Now he remembered.

"Sure Nate, it's right in here."

He led Nate to the kitchen where the brick of product lay on the big center table.

Nate the Noodge pointed a tentacle at it. One of his guards lifted it, sniffed it, then wriggled his tentacle fringe that it was okay. Mick the Mick had expected him to nod but a nod would require a neck, and the guard didn't have a neck. Then Mick the Mick realized he didn't know what a neck was. Or a nod, for that matter.

What was it with these weird thoughts, like memories, going through his head? They were like half-remembered dreams. Nightmares, more likely. Pink flowers, and giant lizards, and big rocks in the sky, and stepping on some mice that looked like a lot like the Capporellis up in 5B. Except the Capporellis lived in 4B, and looked like jellyfish. What were mice anyway? He looked at Willie to see if he was just as confused.

Willie was playing with his cloaca.

Nate the Noodge turned to them and said, "A'ight. Looks like my frisson of malaise and apprehension was fer naught. Yer cloacas is safe ... fer now. But you don't deliver that product like you're apposed to and it's ca.s.serole city, knome sayn?

"We'll deliver it, Nate," Willie said. "Don't you worry. We'll deliver it.

"Y'better," Nate said, then left with his posse.

"Where we supposed to deliver it?" Willie said when they were alone again.

Mick the Mick kicked him in his cloaca.

"The same place we always deliver it."

"Ow!" Willie was saying, rubbing his cloaca. "That hurt. You know I got a - hey, look!" He was pointing to the TV. "The Toad Whisperer is on! My favorite show!

He settled onto the floor and stared.

Mick the Mick hated to admit it, but he was kind of addicted to the show himself. He settled next to Willie.

Faintly, from the kitchen, he heard Nana say, "Oh dear, I was going to bake a cake but I'm out of flour. Could one of you boys - oh, wait. Here's some. Never mind.

A warning glimp chugged in Mick the Mick's brain and puckered his cloaca. Something bad was about to happen ...

What had Nate the Noodge called it? "A frisson of malaise and apprehension." Sounded like a dessert, but Mick the Mick had gathered it meant a worried feeling like what he was having right now.

But about what? What could go sour? The product was safe, and they were watching The Toad Whisperer. As soon as that was over, they'd go deliver it, get paid, and head on over to Madam Yoko's for a happy ending endoplasmic reticulum ma.s.sage. And maybe a cloac-job.

The frisson of malaise and apprehension faded. Must have been another nightmare flashback.

Soon the aroma of baking cake filled the house. Right after the show he'd snag himself a piece.

Yes, life was good.

J.A. Konrath is the author of seven novels in the Jack Daniels series, along with dozens of short stories. The eighth, STIRRED, will be available in 2011.

Under the name Jack Kilborn, he wrote the horror novels AFRAID, ENDURANCE, TRAPPED, SERIAL UNCUT (written with Blake Crouch) and DRACULAS (written with Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson.) Under the name Joe Kimball, he wrote two novels in the TIMECASTER sci-fi series, coming in 2011.

Visit Joe at www.JAKonrath.com.

J.A. Konrath's Works Available on Kindle Whiskey Sour b.l.o.o.d.y Mary Rusty Nail Dirty Martini Fuzzy Navel Cherry Bomb Afraid Origin The List Disturb Shot of Tequila 55 Proof (Short Story Omnibus) Jack Daniels Stories (Collected Stories) Crime Stories (Collected Stories) Horror Stories (Collected Stories) Truck Stop Suckers by JA Konrath and Jeff Strand Planter's Punch by JA Konrath and Tom Schreck SERIAL UNCUT by Blake Crouch and Jack Kilborn Floaters by JA Konrath and Henry Perez Dumb Jokes & Vulgar Poems Endurance Trapped Shaken Draculas by J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, Jeff Strand, and F. Paul Wilson Banana Hammock Taylor liked toes.

He wasn't a pervert. At least, not that kind of pervert. Taylor didn't derive s.e.xual gratification from feet. Women had other parts much better suited for that type of activity. But he was a sucker for a tiny foot in open-toed high heels, especially when the toenails were painted.