Chapter 8: Taco Torture

 “There it is,” the witch pointed across the flat expanse. There was a taco stand at the edge of the strip mall parking lot in which they stood.

“Let's go,” the witch said, and although she didn't want to, she started to walk toward the taco stand, as did Reggie. Bob barked and ran ahead.

It was a gleaming metal facsimile of the UFO they had seen, with a sign out front announcing the “Intergalactic Tacos--Tastiest in Texas.” Tumbleweeds were blowing around the taco stand and there were some cacti in the vacant lot next to it that were mostly covered with bits of litter so they looked like they'd grown multi-colored fur. There was a little speaker thingy that people could speak their orders into and a slot where the tacos came out when they were ready. “You kids are going to live here and make tacos all day.”

“No fair,” objected Reggie, who had otherwise fallen awfully quiet.

“You weren’t paying attention in your Wicked Witch Studies class, were you?”

Reggie glared at her.

“There’s no such thing as Wicked Witch Studies because nobody cares about witches,” Lulu informed their aunt. “Smart people don’t even believe witches exist.”

“Yes, I know. You may eventually come to appreciate that arrangement.”

“Our teachers never even mention witches,” Reggie said.

“Obviously, they should. Kidnappings would be less tiresome if there weren't so many silly questions to answer. They probably don’t even teach Sasquatch[56]communication in biology class.”

“There’s no such thing as Sasquatch, everyone knows that,” Lulu said to her snake-haired aunt, though she’d read accounts from many people who had claimed to have seen Sasquatch.

“I’ll have to tell him that next time I see him,” the witch replied. “I’m sure he’ll feel reports of his non-existence have been greatly exaggerated. No matter, though, you won’t need fancy book-learnin’ in your new job. Just your sequined red taco-making shoes.” She waved her wand and Lulu’s shoes changed into sparkling sneakers. “They’ll help you make tacos faster, ‘cause y'all are gonna be busier than a hog on ice.”

Reggie didn't say anything. He hoped the witch wasn't going to make him wear sparkle shoes. That would be too embarrassing for words.

“Our dad says that red shoe stuff isn’t true,” Lulu said.

“Does Jake know how to access an alternate universe using doorways constructed of thought?” 

“I hate you.” Lulu crossed her arms and refused further commentary. She wasn’t going to admit that Jake probably didn’t and Lulu had no idea what the witch meant by ‘alternate universe,’ anyway.

“Right, I thought not.” With that she pushed them inside and locked the door. Bob jumped in just in time before the door slammed shut. It may be worth noting, here, that Bob was very likely motivated by the scent of delicious taco fixin's, a quirk of character that may have played a key role in this entire fiasco.

As soon as the witch pushed them into the taco stand and the door closed, a speaker shouted out the first order, “Tres tacos, por favor. Uno lengua, uno de picadillo, y uno barbacoa.” They stood there dumbfounded.

Reggie looked at Lulu and all she could do was shrug. Then a horrible alarm started to howl so loudly Lulu thought her eardrums would burst, and lights began to flash. The conveyor belt lurched into motion. Bob crouched down, whining, and put his little paws over his ears. A weird mechanical arm came down from the ceiling. It had two prongs on it and when it touched Reggie, it delivered a shock. Reggie yelled out in pain and the arm started toward Lulu who began making tacos as quickly as she could.

"Get to work, Reggie. Fast. Make tacos."

The moment he did the arm went back up and the sirens quieted. It soon became clear that any time the taco making slowed, the siren and lights went mad and the shocker arm started to extend again. If the taco wasn’t of the right kind, the arm began to extend. If the taco was too messy, the arm jerked forward.

Lulu and Reggie had to get to work fast and Bob was no help at all because he didn't understand Spanish and was only interested in eating tacos, not in making them. This, mostly because he's a dog and eating is his main interest after digging, and dogs don't make tacos. They worked and worked as fast as they could, but even so, the alarm sounded any time their exhaustion began to slow their work. The taco stand was steaming hot from all of the warming tables, too. Their clothes were drenched with sweat and steam and stained with slopped and spilled red and green salsas.

“We have to think of a way out of this, Reggie.” Lulu called as she filled a tortilla with succulent beef fajita meat. “This is terrible and I’m hungry and thirsty and tired.” The worst thing about the taco stand was that they had to make tacos, but didn’t dare stop working long enough to actually eat. It was the most miserable thing Lulu or Reggie had ever experienced. Oddly, Lulu had started to think that, in spite of it being incomprehensibly heinous, she was beginning to try to make tacos better and feel a little pride in that. She found this rather grotesque and disconcerting.

“I never want to see another taco as long as I live,” Reggie called to Lulu, as they both rolled delicious fillings in tortillas and placed them on the conveyor. “This is taco torture.” Even as he said this, his work must have slowed just a bit because the deafening alarm sounded yet again, and the lights began to flash.

When the lights on the outside of the taco stand finally shut off and the orders stopped, the tiny windows around the top of the room showed dark sky where there had been blue. Lulu and Reggie collapsed onto the floor.

They had barely had a moment to catch their breaths when the witch returned. This time there was no appearing door, rather she wasn't there and then she was. 

By this time, Bob was round from eating forty-nine tacos and washing them all down with horchata. He was the only one who’d had any repast.[57]Lulu knew he’d eaten about forty-nine because that was the number that flashed in red overhead on the “tortilla waste” counter that ticked up every time a tortilla was dropped, which had also resulted in Reggie getting some pretty nasty shocks. Lulu’d determined that for some reason only Reggie was getting shocked by deliberately making a few mistakes just to see.

“You two get this place cleaned up. It’s an absolute disaster. You’re really going to have to get a lot faster and a lot neater,” the witch declared. Bob started to vomit, his insides finally having given up trying to contain his gluttony.

Lulu was filled with despair. They worked as fast as they possibly could and there was no way they could get both faster and neater. As for Bob, he was just a little Rat Terrier and couldn’t be expected to be of much assistance other than his current effort to re-eat his vomit. On one hand, Lulu realized that the floor would have been worse if Bob hadn’t cleaned up all the dropped taco fillings and toppings, but some of them were now returning in a different form. Many more days like today, though, and Bob would be so fat that he’d no longer be able to move around.

“I’ll make a crystal ball call while I wait. You two get started on the cleanup,” she stated, taking a small crystal ball from her bag. She stared into the crystal ball and Jake’s face appeared. “Hey Jake. Missing anything? A couple little bratty kids, maybe? A fat, spotted rat-thing, perhaps?”

“You bring back Lulu and Reggie. And Bob, too. If you don’t I’m sending Caleb down there after you,” Jake yelled.

“Ha! Caleb is a double agent. He won’t help you,” sneered the witch. “Who do you think told him about the physics of red running shoes?”

“There is no physics of red running shoes. It’s a hoax and you know it,” Jake shouted. Lulu almost wanted to call out to him, but then she spotted something and had another idea.

“Tell that to the last five Olympic gold medal winners in every single running event," the witch said. "The simple truth is that people believe it’s true and so the fastest runners all wear them, which then reinforces the perception that it’s true, which, in turn, causes those who wear them to believe they're faster, and perform slightly better. So, the whole thing ends up being…”

As the witch said this, Lulu made a desperate move. She picked up a five-gallon container of horchata[58]and threw it right on the witch, who instantly began to shrink.

“I’m shrinking, shrinking,” shrieked the witch. “and you ruined my skunk fur trim!” She shrunk and shrunk until she was the size of a mouse, a scrawny weak mouse, at that. Then she shrunk some more. She looked very upset and the tiny snakes that were her hair looked like tiny frantic worms.

“Guess your bezoar didn’t work,” Lulu said.

“This isn’t a poison,” the tiny witch squeaked. “This is the result of an horchata allergy.”

“Looks like you may need to take us back,” Lulu suggested. “After all, a witch of your stature can hardly hold hostages.” Lulu crossed her fingers that the witch would return them. “We can smash you now,” she added.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, you’ll never get away because all ways here are my way and I’m also unsmashable, magically speaking.” The witch sneered, barely audible at her miniature size. Lulu almost started laughing, but realized that she’d made a misstep by threatening to smash the witch. The witch pulled out her wand, which was now about the size of a sewing needle. She waved it and tiny little sparks came out. The witch seemed to have disappeared, but a squeaky laugh drew Lulu's attention to a high shelf where the witch now stood out of reach.

A buzz became audible from far away, getting louder a little bit at a time, like someone very slowly turning up the volume on the radio that only played static. The sound took on a higher, screaming pitch as it grew nearer. As the sound got louder and closer, Lulu got worried. The more worried Lulu felt, the more pleased the witch looked. Or at least Lulu thought the witch looked pleased, but as small as she now was, her facial expression was hard to make out. The witch looking pleased under these circumstances didn’t seem to promise a good outcome. She really wished she could take back that smashing comment--maybe later she would.

The sound drew nearer until the source sounded like it was right outside. The whole taco stand vibrated. Lulu thought it might be the sound of a thousand angry harpies[59]and the witch looked to be on cloud nine.[60]The door to the taco stand burst open and in came a wasp the size of her dad, with six horrible legs and big round bug eyes and a yellow and black striped body. The bugs’ eyes looked to be made of thousands of tiny, dark mirrors and they reflected back multitudinous images of the entire taco stand interior all at once. Lulu saw herself and Reggie in many of the small multoginoid fractoids. 

That wasn’t the worst part, though. The worst was the stinger and the big pincer jaws. Lulu was shaking with terror and she could hear Reggie’s teeth chattering. She’d been stung by a bee once and it hurt. The bee was tiny, and Lulu remembered thinking that for such a tiny creature it sure could hurt you. Compared to the Jerusalem Cricket… well, she’d never be afraid of a Jerusalem Cricket again.

“Minions!” the witch squeaked. “Seize them!”

Lulu thought she had experienced Nightmares before, but now she was wide awake and this was worse than any of those. The wasp advanced, walking on its long back legs, and grasped her from behind with its claws, pulling her against its disgusting body. Another did the same to Reggie. He was crying now, but Lulu was holding back her tears. She knew they would only make the witch even happier than she already was. For all of her imagining bad things, she'd never imagined something this horrid.

“These are Godzilla Wasps,” the witch informed Lulu and Reggie. Lulu looked over at him and noticed he was making an effort to look brave, having stopped his tears. He still looked mortified, though. “The sting of one of these Godzilla Wasps can kill an adult Sasquatch instantly and it’s been said that the buzzing of their wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the earth. Only honey badgers are immune to their stings, because they don't care about being stung by wasps.”

Lulu didn't know about honey badgers, but she knew very well that a Sasquatch was purportedly a nine-foot-tall hairy creature, which Jake assured her didn’t really exist after Cybil showed her a film of one running away. Anything that could kill that… well, she didn’t want to think about the stinger on the hideous buzzing creature that held her. This seemed to be the very situation for which the saying “out of the frying pan and into the fire” was invented, as things had definitely gone from bad, to worse. She wished she could just take back the whole horchata hurling. Maybe some time she would.

“Take them back to the Black Mansion. Leave them there until I return,” the witch ordered.

The wasps carried Lulu and Reggie to the door and stepped out. Lulu and Reggie could hardly believe their eyes when they saw that there were at least a hundred of the creatures surrounding the taco stand, all buzzing and vibrating their big wings. If there were any people around to see them, Lulu was sure they’d be calling the police, or the army or something. But Lulu couldn’t see anyone. The strip mall was abandoned, the manicurists, cactists, dealers in military surplus, boot shops, the Prada store, saddlers, all having locked up for the night.

The Wasps all started to buzz louder and louder and as they did, the sky darkened and the wind began to howl. Apparently, the wasps could make a hurricane as the witch claimed, if that's what this was. There was wind so fierce that Lulu could hear nothing else. She couldn't feel the ground under her feet. Only the wasp's claws and the wind blowing so her face felt all stretched out like when your mom tells you to stop pulling it funny or it will stick that way. All was dark.

Then Lulu saw a blue glimmer begin to coalesce in front of her until there appeared to be a tunnel of blue light. The wasps that held Lulu and Reggie stepped into it and both were blinded for a moment until their vision adjusted. They were no longer in the strip mall parking lot.

[56]Aka, Bigfoot, or Skunkape. Washington's Skamania County has a law requiring a $10,000 fine and five years in prison for anyone who kills a Bigfoot. Bigfoot is a frequent visitor to the Walla Walla area.

[57]Food.

[58]Horchata (pronounced or-CHA-tah) is a cinnamon rice milk of Mexican origin, which is quite delicious and not hard to make. There will be a recipe at the end of this book.

[59]Mythological winged creatures whose name means “that which snatches.” Lulu didn’t know that, but knew that they are supposed to be terribly noisy.

[60]Clouds’ altitudes are classified numerically, the highest being ‘nine.’ This means a person is so happy she is above worldly concerns, including having been shrunk to the size of a common tooth fairy.