16
Mapped Out

 

“Think you could, like, cool it with the snoring or whatever?” Jennifer said to the strange man asleep in the next cell. He snorted awake, sat up, then put his turban back on his head.

“Very sorry,” Mr. Horum said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “My Bala always say ‘Predsha, one day you wake yourself up with snoring. Then you see what I live with.’”

The door at the front of the room opened. Hot John pulled Axle through and shoved him in an empty cage. “See those spinny thingies in the ceiling?” Hot John asked, pointing to the sprinklers. “Anything in this room gets hot those things spray water all over the place so don’t get any ideas.” He slammed the cell door shut. “You guys stay here and stay quiet… or else I’ll brain ya’.”

A bent old man in overalls coughed. Nobody had seen him come in yet there he stood, stroking his beard as he gnawed on a rotten molar.

“Uh… Hi, Mr. Curley,” Hot John said. “Was you lookin’ for Osbert or something? He’s up in that big spinning thing working on some stuff.”

“Hey, weird dude, you gotta help us,” Axle said. This doofus kidnapped us.”

“I reckon I don’t care what y’all get up to so long as we can open up tomorrow and you don’t get caught. I ain’t hankering to make the papers on account of you fellas, mind.”

“You’d better go find Osbert and ask him,” Hot John said. “He don’t like me making promises for him.”

“He’s down by the Psychlotron you say?” Zeph said. “How ‘bout you stroll on down the way with me and we’ll sort the grasshoppers from the green beans?”

Hot John checked the locks then left with Zeph.

Once he was gone, Jennifer ran to the row of bars between her cell and Axle’s. “So this is, like, your big plan to rescue us?” she said.

“I got caught same as you guys,” Axle said. “Where’s Nuncio?”

“Right here, mi hermano,” Nuncio said from a cell near the back. “Meet my pal Jesse.” He stepped aside to show them the small blond boy who looked absolutely terrified.

“Who the frack is that?” Axle asked (only he didn’t say frack).

“They picked him up same time as me. He didn’t put up much of a fight though. Did you, Jesse?” Nuncio said, lobbing fake punches at the kid’s ribs.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait up,” Axle said, pointing to Mr. Horum watching them from his cell. ”What’s with the old dude?”

“It Horum to you, rude boy.” Mr. Horum said. “Why they capture you? Bad manners, hmmb?”

“You guys want to get out of here?” Jesse asked. His eyes were alight, making him look like a caffeinated little meerkat.

“It’s actually kind of cozy,” Jennifer said. “There isn’t any, like, drama or whatever. Right, Axle?”

“No, I’m serious,” Jesse said. “I think I can bust us out.”

“Sorry, homie, but a little chamaco like you don’t stand a chance against these guys,” Nuncio said, ruffling Jesse’s hair.

“No. You aren’t listening,” Jesse said, falling to his knees. He scratched lines into the dirt on the floor with a rusty nail. “I just gotta have a map or a picture or something. You guys know what the outside of this place looks like?”

“I take back my endorsement,” Nuncio said. “I think he’s cracked.”

“No, no. I’m serious. I have a… super power,” Jesse said.

“Yo, you serious?” Axle said. “What kind of power?”

“I go places. Give me a picture or a map…” Jessie said, tapping his finger on the air. “Then I touch a spot with my finger and that’s where I go.”

Nuncio knelt down, looking Jesse in the eye. “You ever been to City Hall, buddy?”

Jesse nodded.

“Us too,” Jennifer said as she shifted her t-shirt from white to black.

“All of us,” Axle said. He let a little spark jump between his hands. “How’d you bust out?”

“The guard stuck me in a room with a big painting of Colta City on the wall. Guess nobody told him what I could do,” Jesse said.

“These are impossible things,” Mr. Horum said. “This some thief trick?”

“I wish,” Axle said. “Mayor Lane’s been snatching up kids and doing science on them under City Hall. We’re the ones who got away.”

“You think me to be stupid guy?” Mr. Horum said. “How mayor big kidnapping miestermind? Make no sense.”

“We’re trying to figure that part out, but it’s gonna be hard to do from in here,” Axle said.

“Hey, Jesse,” Jennifer said, “if you can, like, break us out of here or whatever, you’d better do it before that muscle head comes back. Go on. Show us your stuff. We’re, like, literally a captive audience.”

Jesse scratched the word Curleyworld in the dirt then drew a circle around it.

“What’s outside this place?” he asked.

Axle shrugged. “Beats me. We all came in the same carriage. I couldn’t see nothing.”

Mr. Horum walked up to the bars to get a better look at the crude map. “There bridge below it, then big road goes under bridge. Yes, and then little bus stop. That where you need go.”

Jesse rubbed his hands together, relishing in his newfound necessity, then touched the bus stop he’d sketched in the dirt. A funnel swirled under his finger then dissipated, blowing the dirt around and exposing the concrete underneath.

“Guess I’ll never be a mapmaker,” Jesse said. He slumped back against the wall.

Mr. Horum pressed his face between the bars. “No, you almost there. Maybe make simpler map. Harder to make mistake if map simple, hmmb?”

“That’s the best idea ever,” Jesse said. He smoothed out his first map then drew a simple grid representing the cells in the room. He touched his finger to the area outside the cells. The funnel formed again, but this time it grew to the size of a dinner plate then sucked Jesse in, twisting him flat like taffy in a puller. Another funnel appeared outside the cell, ejecting the boy (who immediately threw up).

“Totally awesome,” said Jennifer.

Jesse stood up, rocking back and forth as he rubbed his arms together.

“Okay, now how you gonna get us outta here?” Axle said.

Jesse looked back at the door then turned and ran through it, slamming it shut behind him.

Mr. Horum sat back and stroked his beard. “You no can trust no one these days,” he said.

 

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