The Still Beating Heart of the Whoozywhatsit

₵$51    Ghost Tobacco ( 20)

₵$15    Bloody Mary

₵$18    Bug Powder (p/g)

₵$70    Eldorado Green (qt.)

₵$1      Slut Root (p/kg)

₵$30    Marital Aid Potion

₵$25    Quetzlcoatl Feathers (doz.)

₵$5      Blue Roses

₵$33    Mythril

₵$4      BZTCN

 

It was a monstrous thing, bluish against the yellow light and the black trees behind it, although Sam could tell that in daylight it would have been black as night. It was grotesquely distorted, its head pulled at an almost impossible angle straight back to its neck so that it had to bend its entire upper body forward in order to look at them straight on. Its head was covered in slimy scales and its body in fur dripping with a red wetness that they were sure was blood. It stood nearly as tall as one of the huge redwood trees, and in the blackness they could just make out the tip of its long white horns, curved like corkscrews. Its face was a flat surface like a mask, covered in red.

And Amy has killed it. She stands on its torso, knee deep in bloody fur and teabagging where its neck was. She holds a chainsaw aloft her head, thin electricity sparking out of whirring chain.

Sam claps and raises hands: 'I'm out.'

The chainsaw stops: 'Wasn't that awesome? I almost died.'

'Sure. I'm leaving.'

Amy spits blood, probably not hers: 'Okie doke. You still good for Thursday?'

Sam turns, throws indifference over shoulder: 'Sure.'

'Hey.'

He stops: 'Yeah?'

'What would you call this thing?'

He leaves: 'I don't know.'

'Because Wendigo is cultural appropriation. Wanamingo is a wanaming-no because I didn't bust out the flamethrower. Shame. Winnebago?  No. A Whoozywhatsit. Yes.'

Amy recognises adrenalin's comedown. The first beer goes down thirsty. She rides another couple of beers and darts before the sun rises. She leans on the Whoozywhatsit's neck with post blood-nut clarity:

'You're not a penis allegory, are you?'

She refuels the chainsaw, flicks off the +3 electrical damage, begins the harvest with a long slice down the Whoozywhatsit's stomach. The self-bleeding fur will be turned into kinky rugs and coats brought out every Halloween. The meat will be cut into thin steaks paired with a Boticella 'Gilea Rosso' 2017 Nero D'Avola. The heart, dark blue and the size of a basketball, continues to beat after being severed from arteries. Amy is not sure who would want it.

 

Nathan likes to go for bushwalks.  He likes to collect his thoughts whilst walking amongst nature without seeing anyone. One is he is sure nobody is around, he likes to lean forward with left forearm on gum tree and masturbate. Amy witnesses this whilst in hunter's blind with loaded musket, in wait for yowie but giving away her location with snigger.

Nathan puts his penis away: 'Amy. Just who I was thinking about.'

'Context?'

'I heard you have the Still-Beating Heart of the Woozywhatsit. I could probably stab that and summon next level demons, wouldn't even feel bad about killing it. It's not, like, alive, is it?'

'It's not sentient. And why should I give it you?'

The Rifle of Woopsie-Daisy. Instead of a safety it has quarks, tachyons and leprechaun gold. It employs retroactive indecision? Someone points the rifle at something and pulls the trigger - if the owner would, in the near future, regret the shot, then the safety prevents the shot being fired.

Amy summarises: 'So it plugs into my emotions after-the-deal. Question. What if I'm set to piss anger for the next two hours? So I'd shoot someone through the oesophagus and won't regret it until, hm, Tuesday?'

'The A.I. would sense your anger and play calming music.'

'Yeah, but I'm a perfectionist. Like, if those fuckers don't spasm when heart-shot, I might spend thirty seconds pulling the trigger, re-aiming but unable to fire, then those fuckers walk away and I can't say that I shot a centaur and vampire in reverse doggy style and, like, when do you get that angle again?' Sighing. 'I know me and my expectations. I'm gonna' have to say no.'

'Ok.'

'But?

'Wanna' bang again?'

'Sorry, I'm already cheating on my boyfriend.'

 

Amy would prefer the Drugédex, currently in the possession of Officer O'Keefe. Amy first encountered both after stalking a crawler for two days. She was close and suspected that it lay in bracken on the other side of the road, a suspicion confirmed when O'Keefe pulled up in her patrol vehicle. It crawled out on hands and feet, elbows bent at torso height and knees held just above the ground through strength of toes. It was bone thin, dully pale with long, mangy gray hair.

Amy was first: 'Dibs!'

O'Keefe took shotgun from boot: 'You can't call dibs on tweakers.'

'That's not a tweaker, that's a crawler.'

'That's a meth head. I'll show you.'

O'Keefe flicked open the Drugédex, shaped like a smart phone with cover but built from hard red plastic. She pointed it at the humanoid and the Drugédex chirped mechanically:

'Dust. Head.

An in individual under the influence of phencyclidine. The evolved form of PCP use. Liable to busk in shopping centres at seven A.M. in order to unveil Snoop Dog's conspiracy, of maintaining the Crip's and Blood's animosity to maintain the profitability of gangster aesthetic. "Christmas Rap" is ok, I guess. Easy hunting - '

O'Keefe closed the Drugédex and replaced it with her handgun: 'I've been wrong before.'

 Amy was a bit impressed: a device which can distinguish between demi-gods and gods-of-chemically-induced-own-opinion. When Amy next sees police laying siege to an armed domestic situation, she pulls over and opens her boot.

O'Keefe: 'It's still beating'

'It's not human.'

'Clearly. Why are you showing me this?'

'You know what I want.'

'Did you just solicit a police officer?'

'No. The Drugédex.'

Stern: 'The Drugédex is official police equipment provided by the fine tax-paying citizen.'

Amy rolls eyes: 'The Heart is still pumping. A bit of PVC pipe and some duct tape, you could empty a pool, set up irrigation.'

'Neat. How many do you have?'

'I was surprised to find that the Whoozywhatsit had only one heart.'

'Only one?'

'Come on. You could siphon oil real discrete like.'

'Yeah, nah, I get it, it's cool, but it's not Drugédex cool.'

 

So Amy cannot afford the Drugédex or, demographically speaking, life.  Third choice: Amy met Dorothy after smoking some DMT and prowling shopping centre with lever-action shotgun. Everything was fine, she had prepared a good setting: pulse-slugs were loaded for extra damage against machine elves and she was wearing the Hi-Vis Invisibility Cloak, because the first mark of professionalism is safety awareness. Amy bumped shoulders with Dorothy in the health-food shop.

Dorothy: 'My bad, invisible force. I was just reaching for the cider vinegar.'

Amy: 'Not at all, disembodied voice. Say, do I recognise you from somewhere?'

'Noooooo?'

'Huh. I believe you, for now, but how 'bouts we exchange numbers, so I can figure where I know you at a time when ivy isn't climbing up my legs?'

A text the next day: Hello. is this the shelve of multivitamins? But they get talking and realise that they are both perfectly normal women. Amy brings the basketball sized heart to show Dorothy. It is in an esky with ice that has melted in two hours.

Amy, in sales pitch slices a sliver off the flank with bowie knife: 'And it's still beating, see? You cook it, you serve it, and it's still beating. Quite the amuse-bouche, in the middle of your table, if you cook it properly.'

'If you cook it properly' intended as a 'woopsie-doodle, did I just let slip that this was a challenge, silly me, aren't I silly and cute?' Dorothy curls forefinger over her lips, weighing chances, considering pathways. The Heart produces its own heat and so a few embers in the stove might produce enough heat to cook the meat throughout and lightly char the skin.

Amy recognises excitement spiking Dorothy's eyes and so, to seal the deal: 'And whatever marinade you soak it in will get pumped through its capillaries.'

Dorothy catches herself smiling but does not stop: 'The Soylent Peat?'

Which is not a case 'let's eat Pete but misspell it' but pretty close. There was a man named Pete* who sold his body, not to science but to consumerism, in exchange for two bottles of Marital Aid Potion and a dozen Blue Roses. Gray market contracts exist that stipulate that, upon death, the person's body can be harvested and put to most profitable use. Mostly ethical cannibalism. People agree to these contracts because they contain anti-necrophilia clauses.

It was the Kieran Knights-of-the-Galaxy-Klaxon who noted Pete's body floating in the peat bog and received their finder's fee. The butcher ascertained certain quality's of Pete's hind-gut and thoroughly, thoroughly cleaned. The initial plan was to turn it into a wine skin, but the opportunity for another pun offered itself. A bowl: Soylent Pete imbues any vegetarian stew, served in it, with a delectable smokiness and 2.3 standard drinks.

 

* There's a couple of men named Pete. I know one other person named Pete.