Lavabull

  “Lucky me,” I said, and crossed my arms over my massive chest.

  “We are doing the right thing, Bull,” said Lavender. “Neither of us are very political. I suppose I could have controlled him, but such a massive undertaking would be exhausting. No, there is a better man suited for the job, and he is the vice president, a man hand-picked by him,” said Lavender, jutting a finger at the presidential corpse I had laid across a bench behind us.

  “And there is the matter of the president's relatives,” I said.

  She nodded. “Ultimately, our little ruse would have been discovered, and they call that treason, if I am correct. Besides, his family deserves to know he died a hero’s death, protecting his country and the world. The nation deserves to mourn.”

  I thought about all this and more as the submersible continued silently up to the surface. I knew the world was filled with more animen and aniwomen. How many had sided with Villainous? All of them? Or just the handful we had seen? How many were there... and could they reproduce? Could I reproduce?

  “Now, this is a line of thinking I’m enjoying,” said Lavender, coming over to my seat and sitting on my lap.

  I wrapped my arm around her tiny waist. Her horns were back, jutting up through her hair. I admired her solidarity. It felt like we were a real team.

  “A super team,” said Lavender.

  “Lava Girl and Bull Boy,” I said.

  “It does have a certain ring to it,” she said, and leaned down and kissed me, her own lips searing mine, but I didn’t care. My lips were regenerating even as we kissed harder and harder.

  To my regret, she pulled away. “Oh, by the way, you will be getting two new roommates.” She winked.

  I grinned and pulled her back toward me. “I’m going to need a bigger apartment.”

  I might have whimpered as she kissed me harder and deeper than ever before...

  The End

  Also available from

  Piers Anthony and J.R. Rain:

  Aladdin Relighted

  The Aladdin Trilogy #1

  Amazon Kindle * Amazon UK * Paperback * Audio

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  New from Piers Anthony:

  Five Portraits

  A Xanth Novel

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  Walking Plague Trilogy #1

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  Also available:

  Jack and the Giants

  by J.R. Rain and

  Piers Anthony

  (read on for a Sample)

  Chapter 1:

  Dream

  Now that it was too late, I regretted standing up for myself. I should have remembered that I was Jack the Lowly Employee, not Jack the Giant Killer.

  I had reluctantly done the job the boss’s way, and when that went sour the boss had claimed I had done it wrong, sticking me with the blame. Another black mark on my record. It had happened before; my performance reviews had suffered for exactly that reason, as had the reviews of others. We were all being slowly washed out by the bully who could not admit his own frequent errors. That was the straw that stiffened the camel’s spine. I had told the boss exactly what was what, refusing to be bullied any more—and gotten fired on the spot. The others in the office had sent me covert looks of sympathy, but none dared support me openly lest they too prove to be expendable. I had become an example, a warning to others. It was over.

  How could I have been so stupid? I had been the smallest cog in a machine that was a giant of the industry. Giants took little if any notice of cogs; if one squealed it was summarily replaced. There was no such thing as justice; cogs did best when they were not noticed. Anonymity was the key to survival. I had known that. In fact, just about the only reason I had hung on as long as I had was the pretty receptionist at the front desk, the one with the discreet cleavage. I had thought that just maybe she was beginning to think about possibly noticing me. Now of course any prospect there was gone; I would be a pariah, untouchable, no matter how much others might privately applaud my stance. I would be replaced in days, maybe hours, by some other innocent mark.

  So I made a supper of leftover bean curd. I hated it, because beans gave me gas, and bad dreams, but they were what I could afford at the end of the month. Then I finished off the rancid wine—again, all I had—in an effort to get drunk. It didn’t work; I just got stupid, and sleepy, and passed out on the bed, clothed. It was the sad end of a wretched day. Tomorrow I would have to tackle the daunting challenge of finding another job in a depressed economy. With a bad work record. O, joy.

  Sure enough, I suffered a spectacularly crazy dream. I had a cash cow, of what nature wasn’t clear, and traded it to a farmer for a handful of beans. Beans! As if I didn’t hate them enough already! But the farmer claimed they were magic, and in my inebriated state I had believed it. Disgusted as I sobered, even in my dream, I threw them out the window and went to sleep. And woke a few hours later to find a monstrous bean stalk growing outside my window.

  Ludicrous! I went back to sleep.

  I woke in the dreary morning with a hangover that wasn’t too bad, considering. I got up, pissed, pooped, considered puking but didn’t have the gumption, splashed water on my face, and decided to leave shaving for another time. After all, I didn’t need to dress up for work: I no longer had a job. Small comfort.

  I turned on the battered antique radio, all I had after pawning my TV set, and was rewarded by nice harp music. I pictured the shapely receptionist playing the harp, nude, her breasts nudging the strings. That made me feel better.

  There was one egg left in the carton, and one stale bread crust left in the loaf. Too bad it wasn’t a golden egg, and silver bread. I would have to go grocery shopping, if I had any money to do it with. I had been unable to save on the peon wages I got, what with ever-increasing expenses and bad luck. So I had a fried egg and some burned toast for breakfast, and the last souring dregs of milk. At least the power was still on, for now. I put the dishes in the sink on top of the week’s pile. Was this what human existence was all about? It had never been exactly great, and now it was worse.

  I happened to look out the window. My meager apartment was on the fifth floor, and had a nice view of the dingy city street below. Only this morning there was something blocking it: a sort of greenish column. Was someone dangling a green towel down from the window above? If so, why?

  I opened the window and reached out to touch the column. It wasn’t hanging cloth; it was some sort of live stem. In fact it was a growing green tree trunk, where there had been none before, complete with large leaves. It extended all the way down to the pavement below, and all the way up into the sky. It resembled nothing so much as a giant bean stalk. Impossible! For one thing, since when did anything grow through pavement? As high as the sky? For another, I could see the moving specks that were the heads of people below walking right past it, and even through it, without noticing. If there was anything there, only I could see or touch it. What kind of sense did that make?

  Then I caught on. My dream hadn’t ended. I had merely dreamed of sleeping and waking up, a bean-inspired fantasy for a has-bean, ha ha. The magic beans I had thrown out the window had landed, sprouted, and reached rapidly for the sky. Why not? In a foolish dream anything was possible. The folk on the street were awake, so didn’t share the vision. Now I was caught in a lucid dream, where I knew I was dreaming and could change it to suit myself. What the hell. Might as well enjoy it while it lasted. I quickly donned a straw hat, sneakers, gloves, and my cell phone, not that I had anyone to call. Not that any of it mattered in a dream. Then I climbed carefully out the window and onto the jolly green giant stalk. Let’s see where this fantasy leads.

  Climbing it turned out to be as easy as only a dream could make it. The leaves were conveniently placed so that I could set my feet in the crevices where the leaves joined the stem, while my hands grip
ped higher leaves without faltering or slipping. I ascended rapidly, and soon was above the building. Just so long as a storm didn’t come!

  I looked down, and felt dizzy; I was way above the city. I couldn’t afford to lose my focus, lest the dream become a falling nightmare. So I fixed my gaze on the stem and leaves, and continued climbing.

  A wisp of mist brushed by me. I looked up, carefully, and saw that the stalk was rising up through a cloud. Okay, that would restrict my vision so I couldn’t look dangerously down. I kept climbing.

  The fog closed in tightly, feeling thicker than natural; I was almost afraid I would suffocate. Now all I could see was the stem and my own limbs, nothing beyond. How big a cloud was it? The beanstalk was thinning precariously; would it end with me stuck in the cloud? Somehow I had expected more than that. Why have a fantastic dream if it went nowhere?

  Then my head poked up out of the top of the cloud. I blinked, amazed.

  I seemed to be in a hole on a green hillside that sloped to a pleasant valley with a river flowing through it. Trees dotted the slope, and they were huge. I was no proper judge of such things, but my guess was that the nearest tree was a thousand feet tall, and it was not the largest. How could it exist, here on top of a cloud?

  I climbed out of the hole and squatted to touch the ground. It felt solid, not misty, and it smelled of dirt and rotting leaves. That was oddly realistic.

  Beyond the river the land rose again, up to a majestic and remarkably large castle. If the trees were a thousand feet tall, the castle was half a mile high. Again, what could possibly support such a mass, perched on the vapor of a cloud?

  Then I remembered: the dream. All things were possible, no matter how unlikely.

  Yet somehow it no longer felt like a dream. Still, what else could it be?

  Chapter 2:

  Slave

  I pinched myself...and yelped.

  Then again, maybe I only dreamed that I had pinched myself and yelped. There was, in fact, no way I could definitively prove that I was either asleep or awake. No one could. The mind could conjure the greatest magic of all: imagination. Anything was possible in dreams, even the illusion of reality.

  And so I could pinch myself all I wanted, and yelp all I wanted. I could have just as easily been pinching myself in my sleep, and presently yelping in my bed.

  So, I stopped pinching myself and did the only thing I could think of...I headed down a wide dirt road. Granted, I could have just as easily gone back down the beanstalk, and back to my bleak apartment, where I could wait patiently for myself to awaken.

  If I was, in fact, asleep.

  And surely I was.

  There was no other explanation. Magical beanstalks only existed in fairy tales, or in dreams. Yes, I’d heard of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Everyone had. And, sure, maybe I had once or twice day-dreamed about climbing up and up and up and leaving this world behind. Which was probably why my subconscious brain had concocted this story in the first place: to escape the doldrums of my life.

  But why here, exactly, I didn’t know.

  After all, my subconscious mind could have taken me anywhere...to a ship on the high seas, or a palace full of beautiful maidens.

  I looked again at the giant structure set atop the far hill. There was indeed a palace. But was it full of fair maidens? I doubted it. Especially since the original tale of Jack and the Beanstalk spoke of giant women and an ogre who enjoyed consuming children.

  I shook my head at the insanity of it all, and set off down the deeply rutted path. The day was bright, and all thought that I might be walking on a cloud had long since left my mind. There was no way this was a cloud. There was also no way that any of this was real. So, if my depressed mind had decided to conjure me here, to this place, the least I could do was humor it and go along for the ride.

  After all, I could surely wake up at any point, right?

  I hoped so. Especially if there were children-eating ogres nearby.

  The dirt road appeared to meander toward the great castle, and I meandered with it, walking and whistling, and admiring the great beauty. Just happy to be outside—not sulking alone in my dark apartment, and growing more and more depressed.

  After all, it was hard to stay down when up here, wherever here was. In the clouds, I supposed. Or deep in my imagination. Either way, the sun was bright and the wind was cool and the birdsong was beautiful.

  I lifted my face and smiled, reveling in the tranquility—

  A twig snapped from somewhere nearby, jolting me out of my reverie. I turned my head just as the ground seemingly erupted around me. Something surrounded me, rising up through the twigs and leaves and dirt. Something webbed. It lifted me off my feet. One moment I had been walking, and the next I was dangling a dozen or so feet above the ground.

  Trapped in a net.

  ***

  I spun slowly even as I struggled to free myself from the thick rope and even thicker knots. But escape was futile. Heck, there was barely an opening big enough for my hand.

  As I spun I commanded myself to awaken.

  Now, I thought. Wake up now, dammit. This is not fun anymore. Hell, I’d rather be at the office, working for that jerk of a boss.

  But still I spun and swung lightly. From above, I heard the creak of the rope rubbing against a tree branch. I had never felt so trapped and vulnerable in my life. Except, well, when I worked in my office cubicle. But then I would often catch sight of the pretty receptionist.

  But there was no receptionist here. Just a filthy, mud-covered rope.

  It was then that I heard it.

  A crash, as if something heavy had fallen in the forest. As if a tree itself had fallen. Then I heard it again, and again. No, not a tree falling over. They were...footsteps.

  Something was coming. Something huge.

  I made a sound that didn’t sound very heroic as I peeked through the net. What I saw made me pray all over again to a God I wasn’t sure I believed in. At least I wished like crazy that I would just awaken from this nightmare.

  After all, what appeared through the trees was indeed the thing of nightmares.

  It was a giant.

  ***

  “Fee-fi-fo-fum,” said the giant, sniffing the air. He was easily twenty feet tall. Maybe taller. Never had I seen anything so big. Not even the elephants at the zoo. Or even the giraffes. “I smell the blood of a human.”

  Then he caught sight of me, danging in the net, and I might have squeaked.

  “Ah,” he said, the word rumbling so low and deep that I felt it vibrate in my own chest. “Look what we have here.”

  “Wake up, wake up, wake up,” I commanded. But my subconscious mind was having none of it. I silently cursed my subconscious mind.

  Now the giant was moving toward me. As he did so, he crushed any plants in his way, and soon he was blocking out the sun itself. His round, silhouetted face, for the moment, was darkened by shadows. I dangled about chest high to the giant.

  He sniffed again, so loudly that I could hear the air whistling down his nasal passages. He paused, then reached out and spun the net around, catching sight of me from all directions. “You smell different, human. And look different, too.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but couldn’t find the words, although I did manage a helluva squeak.

  “But you sound like a mouse. Never mind. You all taste the same to me.”

  He next grabbed the net by the knotted top, produced a knife that was as long as a lance, and cut me down. He then held me up before him and studied me some more, squinting at me with one open eye. An eye that was as big as a softball. The pupil shrank a little, and his whole eyeball rotated up and down and all around as he studied me some more.

  “What’s your name, human?”

  I swallowed hard, gripping the net as it swung wildly. “Jack,” I said, or think I said. My voice sounded strangled even to my ears.

  “Jack, you say?”

  “Yes. Please, please let me down—”

/>   “From where do you hail, Jack?”

  “New-New York,” I stammered.

  “New New York? Never heard of it. Tell me, human, when did you escape from this New New York?”

  “Escape?”

  He shook the net angrily. “Don’t play stupid with me, Jack of New New York. I’ll eat you right now, never mind the reward.”

  I barely held onto the wildly swinging net. “Reward? I-I don’t understand.”

  He stopped shaking the net and peered at me again, this time with both eyes. He made various grunting noises, and when he spoke again, his breath was so rancid that I fought the urge to vomit. Then again, maybe I was suffering from motion sickness with all the swinging.

  As he studied me, he rubbed his thick jawline with his free hand and spoke quietly to himself, just loud enough for me to make out his words. “Well, the tasty little morsel is dressed kind of funny. Perhaps there is some truth to what he is saying.”

  Other than the distressing fact that he had referred to me as a ‘tasty little morsel,’ I was greatly relieved that he seemed to believe me.

  “Yes,” I said, speaking up, pushing my face through the net. “I do speak the truth. I am from another land. Far, far away from here.”

  The giant studied me some more and I thought for just a moment he was going to set me free. Instead, he said, “Then you are in for a rude awakening, Jack from New New York, for here in Giantland, humans serve only two purposes: some as slaves and others as...” He paused, and a slow smile spread over his wide face. He actually licked his lips when he finished with: “...food.”

  “Wait, no! I shouldn’t be here.”

  “You can say that again, human. Now, enough chitchat. I have work to do. Escaped humans to find. Like I said, some I eat, and some I return for my reward. And I’m very, very hungry, Jack from New New York. You would do well to remain quiet.”