Chapter 56 #2
“Oooh, Captaaaaain! You smell so good!” The words sputter out of me in an exhausted wheeze. The music begins. I start singing “Queer Crocodile” while chasing Byron around the stage. He wavers between acting terrified and being genuinely annoyed by my half-assed attempt at performing in this state.
The haunted mermaids, including Sweet Mike in mermaid drag, swarm around me, and we do our flashmob-like “Thriller” dance.
An even heavier wave of dizziness creeps over me right as it's time for the death roll.
All I have to do is find the right spot and spin, and my body will do the rest. I look out across the faces in the audience, waiting for the sound cue.
With my whole heart, I will my parents to be there one more time.
Instead, I make eye contact with Felix.
“I'm flattered, but…”
Slowly, I put my left foot out and lift my whole body on that one leg.
As I twist myself to turn, I fall off the stage, rolling until I land face up.
The audience gasps, most of them standing up to see.
Luis and two other men in the front row help pull me back on my feet.
Ms. Maguire looks on with her hands over her face.
I nod and give a thumbs-up like nothing is wrong. Everybody claps. The band goes back to playing, and I sing. I slide onto the stage again and get back into the dance with the haunted mermaids. Sweet Mike gets close to me and asks me if I'm okay, but I wave him off.
Then it happens. The moment that was inevitably coming the second Arachnodesiac stuck me with his fangs.
Blood rushes and swells between my legs, like I've put my dick in one of those drugstore blood pressure machines.
I inflate to maximum length, and even after that, the feeling of horrific stretching won't stop.
It's the worst pain I have ever felt in my life—even worse than my time in the hospital after the tornado.
I bend down, knock-kneed, hoping nobody will notice.
When I hit the high notes in my song, I'm really just screaming.
The audience begins murmuring, with some even laughing.
It's time to do the stag leap, so I push myself into the air, and like a shitty rocket I fall back to the ground on my back.
That's when the audience sees it pushing through the thick green cotton, clear as day.
It looks like I've pitched a tent with my costume.
“OH MY GOD,” one lady cries from the audience. One of Naz's grandfathers puts his cap on and hobbles off as quickly as he can to the exit with his cane. Luis sinks into his chair and throws his hands over his eyes.
Byron, unaware of my stiff predicament, whirls around the stage.
I have to get up before I miss the tango.
I pull myself to my feet and stagger over to him so he can lock arms with me.
He grinds his torso into mine and pushes into my dick.
I let out a pained squeal. He looks at my hard-on pushing through the costume and loses his composure for half a second before getting back into character.
His hook slams into my groin, probably not by accident, and he pushes me away from him.
I'm bending over, catching my breath. I can't sing the final lyrics.
My arm and my crotch hurt so much, and all the different colors and people in my field of vision grow distorted.
Darren is lowered down on the cable to place the French chef's hat on me, but he takes one look at my lower half and drops the hat next to my foot before being lifted back up.
When the song ends without a single pair of hands clapping, I run to the dressing room and kick everybody out as I look for a roll of tape.
Sweet Mike and Sita hurry behind.
“What did you do, take Viagra?” Sweet Mike asks. “People are walking out now!”
“Find me some tape, please,” I say.
Sita gets me the tape, and I hide behind a clothing rack, where I pull down my underwear and fold my uninvited, throbbing guest toward my chest, holding it there as I wrap the tape around my waist. I've accepted that there's an enhanced risk of penile exploding, but my chances of ever having a love life after tonight will be permanently nonexistent, so I take comfort in that as I tear up from the pain.
Darren peeks in with a grin, his beaming eyes full of schadenfreude. “Great going, Wade! The first stage hard-on in Oyster Pit history!” He sticks his thumb up at me.
The door opens wider and Daisha pushes him out of the way. “All right, Pinocchio. Is this one of your pranks or deliberate sabotage or both? Because you are ruining everything we've worked for.”
“Listen,” I say hoarsely. “A spider bit me.”
“A spider, huh? You're out there looking like an OnlyFans crocodile!”
“I'm not playing games,” I say with a burst of breath as waves of pain I never thought existed ride through my crotch.
I pull my arm out of the costume and show Daisha my hand, which is gum-pink and looks like a leathery blimp.
It feels like a hot fire poker stabbing through me.
The pain radiates up to my shoulder and throbs.
She studies the bite with a combination of amazement and horror, then says, “A spider did that?” and points to my crotch.
I can tell from her expression that she believes me now.
“I'm so sorry, Daisha. I can finish the show. I promise. But y'all are going to need to rush me to the hospital as soon as we're done.” A thick gloop of saliva drips from my mouth to my legs like a long string of mozzarella.
“Jesus save us!” Daisha grabs some napkins from the nearest table and wipes my face.
By some miracle, I don't collapse over the next hour.
I continue to chow down Tylenol and ibuprofen, and despite my fever going down, the pain never subsides.
As I get into place for Captain Hook's big finale, Byron turns and grabs me by my crocodile neck.
“Ruin my show and I'll ruin your life. Cazzo.”
The song starts. The fumes I'm running on are about to disappear, but I can do this. It's my last appearance until curtain call, which I can skip while somebody calls an ambulance.
My vision is still blurry. I bump into the chorus. Byron swirls around onstage in between the pirates and the Captain Hook chorus. I miss my step and he pelts me in the back with his hook, which I'm also sure wasn't an accident.
A god-awful, horrendous ache seeps into my bowels. One time on Thanksgiving, my parents and I got sick after Dinah insisted on cooking the turkey but didn't defrost it well enough. It felt like a poisonous balloon was inflating in my stomach until I exploded. This is a million times worse.
Darren is lowered down over us, his legs curled backward, with the pink hook in his hands. The song is almost over. My part in the show is done after this. I can do it. I just need my stomach to hold on.
“And yes, oh yes, my darlings! The hook will maaaaaaaaatch,” Byron sings, taking a deep breath before he finishes with “the shoooooooooooooes!” His arms rise slowly and triumphantly.
His eyes are closed as Darren places the pink hook on his hand.
The audience roars in applause, jumping to their feet.
My hope is short-lived.
My churning, pain-ridden stomach starts to quake.
As Byron continues to hold the final note for as long as his proud lungs let him, the cast around me chanting “Welcome me!” on loop, I feel a ghostly punch to my stomach, a hit so rough that my esophagus wrenches open, and a thick, burning river of discolored vomit crashes into his face and costume for the longest five seconds of my throat's life.
The auditorium is dead silent except for the buzzing of a fly.
The Persian aunties look on in terror. Their sons' laughter fills the silence.
Ms. Maguire's got one hand on her heart and the other over her mouth.
Felix is covering his eyes. Carsten is howling in delight.
Byron slowly opens his eyes. Vomit drips from the hook and his pirate hat as he stands frozen like he's lost in Pennywise the Clown's Deadlights.
If you looked hard enough, you could probably see his soul leaving his body.
The cast around me have all stopped what they were doing, staring at me with stupefied horror.
The entire crew is piling over each other in the wings to gawk at us.
“Umm. What the fuck?” Darren says from the air. He already placed the pink hook on Hook earlier.
Byron takes one look at the puddle of vomit he stands in and stares at the audience.
A shriek that could eternally circumnavigate the earth escapes from his mouth, his arms shaking as his legs start to run in place.
He flees sideways offstage like a cartoon crab, screaming the whole way into the dressing room.
Darren hangs precariously over the mess, gagging as the cable drops him closer to it.
“Stop! Don't drop me, you idiot! NO, NO, NO!”
The cable is fully slackened. His body makes a loud plop as he falls flat on his back in the pool of vomit, his animatronic wings sweeping back and forth, creating a sludgy vomit angel.
“Why, God, why?” Darren yowls with tears filling his eyes and dripping down his temples into the puke.
By now, everybody has abandoned the stage.
In the blink of an eye, I'm sideways and on the ground.
I can hear the faint echo of my collapse.
I see the legs of people running toward me, and I look upward as I start to convulse.
The stage lights bleed everything out. My consciousness saps away, and that familiar tunnel of darkness calls me back.
Suddenly, I'm in the whirlwind, ascending, but it feels like I'm in free fall.
“Plainsong” by the Cure reverberates around me.
Fingers, warm and firm, wrap around my hand, and when I turn to my side, Felix smiles.
His face, his eyes—everything sparkles. Of course it's him.
This is his song. We float together, a blissful, star-birthing fusion.
The air is cool and crisp, not freezing like the tornado, and it grows warmer the higher we get, where the light is. It feels so good, so eternal.
A dinghy appears below us, rising to reveal Byron in his Captain Hook outfit.
Arachnodesiac sits in the middle, his legs now paddles that are rowing the boat.
Byron laughs sinisterly and swats at our hands with his hook.
Felix's grip breaks, and I fall quickly into the darkness.
My body feels like it's on an elevator going up.
The deeper I fall, the more I feel the blood rushing in my head. Now I feel cold.
Somebody pulls on my leg. “Get out of my way, Wade!” Dinah's voice yells, and she manifests from below, dressed like the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.
Spinning around her is Clint, dressed like the Mad Hatter, his mustache almost covering his whole face as he douses liquor into a set of teacups floating around him.
Dinah kicks me down with her high heel. I go flying past Mom and Dad, who don't notice me yelling for them. When they do look at me, they scream.
My hands are no longer human; they're green and reptilian. My mouth is long now, my teeth jagged and razor-sharp. Roland floats near me, his long legs swishing in the air, so appetizing. I bite them off. He screams in agony, and we fall together, his legs still in my mouth.
El Cocodrilo!
El Cocodrilo!
Me!