The Pineapple Men

I’m on my elbows in a progressive muscle relaxation when my nervous system is ripped through by a frantic pounding on my front door. I rush to the window and see Taka leaning his head on my door, still banging his fist.

"Damn— Taka? What—shit," I start to motion at Taka but he's already stomping in. He smells pungent and sickly metallic. His clothes are soiled and there's a bloody balled up jacket around his lower arm. He appears as though he just survived close proximity to a bomb.

"Antibiotics! I know you didn't finish 'em. Where!?" Taka's shouting at me.

“Wait a minute. We need to get you to a healer..."

Taka curses and violently disorganizes the contents of my kitchen cabinets, "Cherries. I need cherries!"

Taka has lost his mind. 

"What's going on? Come on, let's just get in the car," I try to stay calm as my best mate drips blood all over my kitchen.

"They took my fucking hand!"

"Who!?"

"The Pen— Pineapple Men! Help me!"

Amoxicillin. Cherries. Now it makes sense. 

"You're not actually planning on busting in on them and...what? You gonna dump a brew on them? Let me take you to get your wrist capped, or at least get some pain potion."

"Already numbed it and I don't want— I'm gettin’ my hand back, dammit!" Taka huffs and mutters to himself as he rummages through the lower cabinets, “I'm gettin' it back. I'm gettin' it back.” He slams a pot up on the stove. "You gonna help me, or...?"

I throw my hands in the air and pull the amoxicillin out from the fridge. "Can we use cherry juice?" I ask. I always forget to throw out the jars. 

"Gotta work," Taka snatches the antibiotics from my hand, dumps them in the pot, then smashes at them with the bottom of a plastic cup.

"I have a mortar and— nevermind," I shake my head and start emptying the jars into the pot. The rest of the pill chunks should dissolve in the liquid. I grab a big spoon and start stirring. "Wasn't there another ingredient?"

Taka crashes down onto a dining chair and grabs his hair with his one hand, trembling. I get my first aid supplies out of the closet and start unwrapping the jacket from his other wrist. 

"Lyl," Taka starts, "I have to get it back."

"I know."

"I need to play. I can't..." Taka glances over to the stash of string instruments in the corner of my living room. 

"We'll get it back, okay. How in the hell did you get mixed up with The Pineapple Men?"

"I was drinkin’ at Tabby's,” Taka sighs deeply and shakes his head, “After that joke of a gig we had last night, I was a lil’...loud. A Birdbeak came and slipped me a card from her apron. Said she knew someone who’d get us noticed. Big time. Blah blah," Taka clears his throat as I finish tying off a bandage, "Told me just show ‘em the card. No money. Some guys would hook me up. Well not guys...but," He shrugs, "Anyway, got to the place. This shrivel-headed, yellow bloke let me in. Wanted to know how badly I wanted it. I said I'd give 'anything' to get us noticed...I didn't think... Didn't have time. They just took it. Sliced my hand into an ice box and handed me this stupid necklace," Taka reaches in his pocket and pulls out a bloody chain-wrapped pendant, "Said not to contact ‘The Pineapple Men’ again as they threw me out."

He tosses me the necklace and I run it under the tap. The pendant is an egg-shaped stone caged in wire. I try to dig my nail into the wire. The copper appears to be charmed, magically tethered to the green tiger's eye. Seems legit. 

"You think it's a general charm? Like, it would give us luck when we up and storm a gang of PM’s?" I hand the necklace back to Taka.

"Fuck if I know," Taka's tone is offhanded. Like he doesn't care that this is a suicide mission. 

"I have our old water guns. We can fill them up. You think you can shoot one-handed?"

Taka half scoffs and half chuckles, "You've seen me on a Schrammel."

"Well, if this brew doesn't work, we're just shooting juice at flesh-eating demons," As the words come out, I'm not sure if I want to laugh or back out, but Taka and I have been playing together for over a decade. His loss is my loss and we're barely keeping the band together with all our hands intact. Being human isn't exactly good for business. 

I have Taka hold the funnel while I pour the mixture into the large plastic tanks. We load up Taka's truck with our guns and a water bottle of excess potion. Taka thinks he should be the one to drive since he knows where we're going. After a futile protest, I hop into the passenger's seat and pull one of the water guns like a rifle to my chest. Taka looks absolutely mad in his blood-soaked clothing, spinning the steering wheel with his bandaged stump, the huge green amulet dangling from his neck.

We pass the city limits and roll through a few back roads. As we cross a narrow bridge, Taka tells me to get ready. From the marsh below, crystals twinkle in the shallow water. The Pineapple Men must be farming them, illegally.

We pull up to a chain-link gate and I sink down behind the dash. Taka lowers his stump as he flashes the waitresses card out of the window at a guard. The guard opens the gate and we ride further down a winding path. Taka hits the brakes as he takes the last curve and we roll up to a large brick warehouse. 

It occurs to me that we don't really have much of a plan. Taka said the PM's don't carry guns. They don't need them. We'll enter the same way Taka did the first time. There's a short stairwell at the side of the building. We'll take that down and then when a PM opens the door we'll blast him. Wait until another comes out to check, blast them. One at a time. But what if they don't come out one at a time? There are other doors. What if they figure it out and surround us? What if they're just walking around outside the building? There's too many ways this could go badly. My chest is starting to feel tight. What if our potion doesn't work? Or there are other types of demons there? I'm almost hyperventilating. 

"Lylo! Slow it down. Breathe...We've got this. One pineapple head at a time," Taka sounds way too confident, but some of it rubs off and my panic starts to level out. 

"Okay, as soon as they stop coming, you can run in and find your hand. I'll follow you and splash anyone still inside."

Taka nods and we step out of the car, leaving the doors wide open and the engine running.

As we get to the top of the stairwell, two large Pineapple Men in coveralls are waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs. The guard must have told them we were coming. Taka and I try not to look conspicuous as we brace our water guns against our backs.

“We told that Bird to stop sending huma–,” Taka shoots one of the demons right in the face, interrupting his growling with corrosive force. The demon yells and I draw my gun as the second Pineapple Man lands at the top of the stairs in one high leap. I back up and blast him in the torso and he falls to his knees, wailing. The warehouse door cracks open and two more demons run toward us. Another bursts out just as the door swings closed. Before I can think, Taka swivels and blasts all three of them in the jaw with one long stream as the first demon he shot starts to crawl up the stairs toward us. I shoot at him and squirt all of them again for good measure. The demons all roll and writhe on the sidewalk and in the stairwell. I look at the tank on my water gun and realize I’m nearly out of potion. Taka must be running low, too. 

“Come on, Taka, let’s just go! If we leave now we might make it out of here alive.” 

“NO! I’m not leaving without my hand!” Taka rushes down the stairs, stepping over the hoard of demons. He takes a long look up at me and I stare back, frozen, as he yanks the door open and disappears inside. 

After taking a moment to process, I rush back toward the car. I grab the bottle of extra potion from the footwell and refill my tank as quickly as I can. Half of it spills onto the seat but this will have to do. I run back toward the warehouse and hopscotch down the stairs, around the, now unconscious, demons. I take a deep breath and pull the door open, then cautiously peek inside. There are curtains dividing a large room and an awful stench like the smell of a hospital emergency room mixed with a meat freezer and a hint of burnt pineapple. I run down the length of the room, turning my head after each curtain. When I get to the end, I spot Taka ripping lids off of a massive stockpile of ice boxes. There are at least five demons on the ground, buried under styrofoam lids. 

“Hah! Yes, haha. YES!” Taka shouts, replacing the lid on one of the ice boxes. He looks like a superhero standing on the tall stack of coolers and for a moment I think his amulet must be glowing. 

“Taka!” A door slams open and another group of Pineapple Men swing around the corner. Taka and I run toward the door. We bust through it, slamming into one of the demons we shot earlier. He must have woken up. The other four surround us like hungry zombies as we try to make it up the stairwell. I pull the trigger on my gun and let out a warcry as potion splashes off the demons and some of it gets in my mouth. I elbow my way past them and Taka bulldozes one of them with his ice box. We scramble up the stairs and fling ourselves in the car. I pull the gear shift into reverse and Taka hits the gas and turns. He smacks the breaks and the car doors slam shut. I shift him into forward drive and we speed up the path. Without hesitating, we burst right through the gate. I catch my breath as I stare back at the cloud of dust trailing behind us. As we pass over the crystal marsh, I stare down at my empty water gun.

"Milk thistle," I turn to look up at Taka, "We forgot to add the milk thistle.”