I held my hands up, trying to stop the monster from bludgeoning me with the frying pan. But then something sharp and gleaming popped out through its eye, a splash of blood accenting the sudden addition to its gruesome face.

It was an arrowhead.

The monster stayed still for a beat, but then it sagged and then toppled over on top of me. The frying pan clamoring as it hit the broken street. I cried out. Even though its heft wasn’t hurting me, I was scared and dearly wanted to get away from the damned thing. My head and shoulders were the only parts of me not pinned underneath the monster.

I tried to push the hulking beast off me, but got nowhere. It was too big, and I was too damn small. I almost called out for help. But… well, the last time I did that, this nasty thing came.

I lay there, trapped under the monster, and looked around. If there was a frying pan lying around, maybe there was a carjack, or something I could use to make a lever/fulcrum thing-y.

Over by the tree in the side yard, something kind of shimmered. I looked over in time to see a hooded figure slip into being where there had been nothing a heartbeat before. The figure was tall and foreboding, a longbow out of a role playing game grasped in one of his hands.

“Motherfucking shit-balls!” I croaked, trying to scrabble backwards, but not getting far.

The hooded figure tilted his head, and I heard him let out a long, thoughtful “Huh…”

He took a few steps toward me, and I tried even harder to get out from under the dead monster, but in seconds he was standing over me, blotting out the overcast sun.

I was about to scream—again—but then he pulled back his hood, revealing ink black hair and familiar blue eyes. An immediate welling of relief and happiness flooded through me.

“Teddy!”

“Mort?” he said, his eyebrows knitting. But then he said my name again, this time without the questioning. “Mort.” A smile spread across his face, and he laughed one ragged Ha. “You’re alive… kind of.”

He reached down and rolled the monster’s corpse off of me. I struggled to get up, but Teddy reached down and helped right me on my feet. “I’m… I’m so glad to see you.”

He looked like he was about to say something else, but he shook his head. “We need to get out of here. It’s not safe.”

“No shit,” I said, and looked around me at the hole I’d fallen into. “Is this a… a footprint?”

Teddy’s eyes looked shiny, and he blinked a few times. “Yeah. We need to get to the pizzeria.”

I tried to nod, but my neck wouldn’t budge. I looked up at Teddy the best I could. “Am I really a fucking gnome? Or am I just dreaming this shit?”

Teddy shook his head. “You’re definitely a gnome. I think… I think that’s Mrs. Hendershot’s gnome, Winston.”

Something sighed… maybe it was a groan. “Did you hear that?”

Teddy looked off into the distance. “No. Let’s move.” And with that he leaned down, picked a small gold coin off the ground, and then he started walking off down my street. Well, what used to be my street.

“What happened?” I asked, feeling completely lost and following behind him. We passed by houses that had been either torn in half, or leveled flat to the ground, as if they’d been stomped on by a freaking giant. I stopped and looked back at the huge-assed footprint I’d fallen into.

I turned back, Teddy staring at me with an indescribable expression on his face.

“What happened?” I repeated.

Teddy bit his lip, shaking his head slowly. “Alien invasion, end of the world shit.” His eyes focused on me again. “And you’ve been dead for, like, two weeks.”

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Two weeks?

“But now you’re not. So, let’s get you somewhere safe before you get killed again.”

Killed again…

Jesus.

“Come on,” Teddy said, turned, and started walking down the street again.

I had a million questions whirling through my mind, but couldn’t pick one out from the din. I started to follow him, struggling to keep up.

I gaped at the sight of Mrs. Hendershot’s house now nothing but charred rubble.

Alien invasion. End of the world. I’ve been dead for two freaking weeks. My corpse is rotted, bug-infested gore. And I’m a fucking gnome.

Fuck me.

***

My legs were so short I ended up running to keep up with Teddy. And, oddly enough, I wasn’t getting winded or tired. But I didn’t have a chance to question that much. Every few seconds I would see something amongst the debris and raw carnage that I recognized. Like Mason Gooding’s house utterly untouched. The 5th Street Park was still surrounded by chain-link fencing, but the only thing left inside were the swings. Everything else was nothing more than scorched land. The Episcopalian church my family went to until after my dad died was now nothing more than a front door and some bare bricks sticking out around that.

This had to be a dream. A really, really bad dream.

Teddy paused at the intersection of Pine Bluff Avenue and 10th Street, but then he kept walking forward.

I stopped, looking down what was left of Pine Bluff Avenue. “Hey,” I said, glancing from the seriously broken looking street, a smashed to the ground car sitting smack dab in the middle, and then back to Teddy. “This is the way to the pizzeria.”

Teddy stopped, not looking back at me. “We should go this way.”

If I could've shook my head, I would have. “But this way is–”

I stopped, my attention suddenly focused on the back bumper of the flattened car. The bumper sticker read, Polka Will Never Die!

That was my mom's bumper sticker. I staggered forward a few steps. The world was shaking. “That's my mom's car!”

I ran toward it, Teddy calling for me to stop. But I didn't stop, not until I was at the driver's side door. A purple splotched hand hung out the window. My mom's hand, her wedding ring on her finger.

I fell to my knees, looking up at her hand.

No, no, no, no, no…

I tried to reach up and touch her hand, but on my knees I couldn't reach.

I dropped to my hands and knees and screamed. The sun darkened right before I closed my eyes.

I don’t know how long I cried and screamed. I was trapped remembering the last time I’d talked to her. On the phone, right before...

I remembered that she’d been telling me she loved me–but then she’d been cut off. I couldn’t call her back.

This was why. She’d been so close to home.

It was weird that I wasn't crying tears, and I wasn't snotting-up. Finally, I realized I was screaming. Just like I was when that monster came and attacked me. I clasped my hands over my mouth, suddenly scared shitless.

Switching emotions that quickly felt almost robotic. Being… whatever the fuck I was now. I wasn’t human any longer.

I started to look around, and that’s when I noticed that the sun was actually blotted out in a way. I could still see the ground, and I could still see a sliver of the wreckage in front of me. I moved to stand up, and that’s when I realized I had something over top of me. It was cloth. Unfortunately, I couldn’t feel much of it, but it was still there.

That’s when it was lifted up off of me. I leaned back so I could look up. Teddy stood over me. He'd taken his cloak off and put it over top of me.

“My cloak makes the wearer invisible, but also soundless and scentless: totally undetectable.” So he’d covered me up with it to protect me. So nothing would hear me. That's Teddy in a nutshell: unfailingly thoughtful and kind.

He blinked a few times—that meant he was thinking. “I wonder, though, if someone could taste me?”

It was my turn to blink.

Teddy was still staring off into space. “You know, since it makes it so that the other senses can’t sense me, I wonder if it does that with taste as well.”

A brittle laugh escaped me. Only Teddy would be so analytical to think like that. I closed my eyes, trying not to think about what was behind me.

My mom… dead.

“Uh… that would be good if your opponent was a reptile,” I said, “Someone who would use their tongue to smell—to taste the air.”

Teddy nodded, and then he looked at me. “I’m sorry. I was trying to take you the other way, so you didn’t have to see this. You know, right off the bat.”

Teddy was always like that. Always considerate of others.

He pulled the cloak back onto himself and looked up and down the street. “We should get you to the pizzeria.”

I nodded. We’d always hung out there.

I turned back around and looked at my mom’s hand again. It hung out of the crushed car, as if she was sleeping. Part of me was repulsed and yearned to get away from the body. But another part of me needed to touch her hand one last time. I stepped toward her and took her hand in both of mine. It was cold, and the skin was rough and dried out. I would be able to feel that, wouldn’t I?

I closed my eyes. Good bye. I love you.

I turned back around and started walking in the direction of the pizzeria, Teddy by my side.

It really was pretty fucked up I couldn’t cry.

***

We turned onto Longfellow Road, where Mars Pizzeria resided. The building was halfway down the street, a plain, single-story brick square with a couple steps leading up to the front door. Teddy immediately started to run towards the building. I didn’t get a chance to ask him why, I just ran after him.

He rushed up the front stairs and through the already open door. Before I made it to the steps, I heard an anguished cry.