Beantown Bug

When Beth and Jake returned, they found me in the midst of gnawing the legs off a very nice—very unfortunate—dining table. Of course that was just what they caught me chewing on—I’d mauled the living shit out of just about everything in the room. It was like a tornado had come through. A very frustrated, black and blue tornado, making noises that could best be described as coming from the offspring of Stitch and the Alien.

I couldn’t blame them if they were afraid of me now. I had my fangs out and everything.

“Ian ickshplain!” I shouted through a mouthful of mahogany, before swallowing it, like a mutant termite. That only seemed to appall my housemates further. “All the chairs and this table were too tall to sit at, so I shortened them!” I waved a leg and, with nary a second thought, flipped a somethinghundred pound dining table back onto its legs. I gestured toward it. “See? It’s very even.”

Beth only stared at me. Jake shook his head and slurred out a little, “Wha?”

“Well—I mean, I looked for a saw, but I couldn’t find any around,” I said, “And I had to keep an eye on the food, so...yeah. Y’know what, nevermind, I’ll go find, uh, I’ll go get dinner, just—” I staggered over to a couple of the recently-chewed chairs and set them beside the just-chewed table— “Just sit down, I’ll be right back.”

Whether or not they heard the pot’s distressed squealing as I bit into it, neither of the two ponies mentioned it. They seemed content to stare at me as I brought it in and dropped it on the table, like a dog delivering the news. They were eerily silent while I brought out the salad and bread as well, and still hadn’t deigned to speak with me by the time I dumped some silverware on the table. And at that point, I’d had enough.

“Okay, what’s wrong?” I growled, looking between the two. Beth bared her teeth, lifted a hoof, and wiggled it at her mouth.

I swung my stupid tentacle tongue around and folded up my fangs. Better?

“Did you hear that noise a little while ago?” Jake asked, after a few more seconds of silence.

“No?” I furrowed my brow. “I mean, I hear plenty of shit. What was it?”

“It kinda sounded like one of those,” Jake trailed off as he searched through his head. He looked at the table, then back to me. “Like one of those old screamers, you remember those?”

“Like the ones your friends would send you, if they were dicks?”

“Yeah.”

I shook my head. I knew exactly what they were talking about, but I certainly didn’t want to admit it. To do so would be a sign of weakness—weakness I couldn’t afford to let them see.

Then Beth spoke up. “It was really, really loud, Peter, how could you not hear it?”

I shrugged.

“You probably could’ve heard it from a mile away—”

“Gonna be honest, Beth, I really don’t know what you’re talking about. This transformation shit is just driving us all crazy, that’s all—”

“Pete,” my brother cut in, and I looked straight at him, “This happened literally seconds after we drove off, and it came from the house! There’s no way you didn’t hear it.”

“Yeah, if something bad happened, we need to know.” I looked to Beth, then Jake, then Beth again. My brain went into overdrive, trying to find a graceful way out.

I sucked my teeth and shook my head. “I stubbed my toe.”

Jake and Beth just looked at me.

“Hoof, thing, whatever!” I exclaimed, holding up aforementioned limb for them both to see, “It hurt like a motherfucker, and I haven’t felt pain in the past two days, so why don’t you cut me a little slack? Now come on and eat, I worked hard on this. Here, I’ll go grab one of those toothed ladles and be right back.”

Dinner was not the joyous, food-filled affair I had hoped for. The three of us had collectively poisoned the well with our conflict, and I couldn’t help but wonder who was more at fault.

The blame may have been uncertain, but my hunger sure fucking wasn’t.