Gorbs

When I started writing, I had pretty lofty goals. I didn't want to be some hack, hammering out copy for the latest McWhatever commercial. I damn sure didn't see myself stuck under the thumb of some eccentric, rich moron with no sense of subtlety.

Pace was the sort of 40-something money-grubber that wouldn't recognize an original idea if he did a line of coke off its bare ass.

It should be clear that I hated the man.

As often happens in life, however, the object of my scorn also had everything I needed to make my ideas a reality. Namely, very many zeroes in his bank account.

"Hey! Woody!" Pace called out that voice that always made him sound like some drunken Uncle, "Woody-boy! Come in, come in!"

He was never good with remembering other human beings, but something about my last name, Woodward, had stuck with him. Probably the phallic symbolism, even if it was on a subconscious level.

"Pace, good to see you!" I took his hand and shook it, squeezing as hard as I could. It was the one measure of physical violence I could inflict without tearing up my meal ticket.

"Sit! Sit!" he gestured to the laughably small metal chair with his laughably large ham-hand.

I fussed with my papers a bit… my screenplay… and wedged my ample writer's derriere into the seat.

"You wanted to talk about a new project?" Pace leaned back in his own chair and lit a cigar. He was a cliché to the end.

"Yes, sir…" I started.

"Pace. Call me Pace!"

The man's name was nowhere close to "Pace", and by no stretch of the imagination could you shorten it as such. However, he was nothing if not a self-made man… right down to the questionable diplomas on his office wall.

"Yes, Pace… Sir. See, I've been sitting on this script for a while, and I figured-"

"Hey," he interjected, "Did you see the dailies on Scrape?"

The movie about a demented serial killer who scrapes his victims to death. I'd written that piece of garbage for the man, and hated every moment of it.

"No, I haven't. Not yet. The script I was talking about-"

"It needs a bit of work."

"I'm sorry," I squinted at Pace and then down at the work in my hands, "I don't… think you've read it…"

"Scrape, I mean. We might need some rewrites. There's a little too much talking, the audience won't get it."

"The audience won't get it?" I asked calmly.

"Yeah."

"The audience won't 'get' English dialogue?"

"That's not what I mean," he took a long puff and dragged out the response, "But don't worry about, we can figure that out later. Go on about your story."

"Okay. Well, I've had this script for a while, now… it's based on a concept I thought of in high school. I did a bit of noodling away on it throughout College. Now I feel like I have the experience and skill to-"

The intercom buzzed.

"Yes?" Pace jammed the red button with his sausage finger.

"Are you still with Mr. Woodward?" the Reception's valley girl voice hissed dismissively.

"Yeah, but don't worry about it. What's going on?" Pace waved his hand my way without so much as a look.

"Mr. Peets is here."

A wide-eyed expression came across Pace's face. He nearly choked down the whole cigar in one stifled gasp.

I knew Peets. Harold Peets. He was a local writer who had 'made good' scripting a TV series that filmed in town. After decades of working my way through failure after failure… flake after flake… asshole after asshole… Harod Peets had risen to my precise level simply because he'd been an "Extra" who rudely shoved his work in a Producer's face.

Well, perhaps a level above me, judging by Pace's pale complexion.

"We'll have to hurry this up, my next meeting is early!" he stammered, looking to me as if I simply MUST understand his predicament.

I could suffer any offense, however, as long as my pet project got through the door.

"My story is about…" I was talking quickly, now, fumbling, trying to find my thoughts, "It's, you see, the story is about a woman who becomes addicted to finding lost children. She joins the… uhm… those, like, search parties… and-and-and, it's the only social interaction she-"

Pace rolled his hands one over the other, urging me to get to the point.

"It's called 'The Grief Eater', which is based on - okay, it doesn't matter where the title comes from," a stinging bead of sweat invaded my eye, "Shit. Oops. Sorry, I mean, eventually in the third act her life is falling apart, and-"

"Pass." the balding oaf barked.

"What?"

"Too sad, unless you're going to show the kids getting killed. Does she kill the kids?"

"Wha… no. I mean, she could."

Inside, I was screaming at myself. I was screaming at Pace. I was screaming at fucking Peets for being fucking early at the one fucking time I had to use my influence before fucking awful "Scrape" came out and fucking bombed as I knew it would.

"I tell you what…" Pace seemed to calm for a moment. A serene look came over him. He leaned back and took another drag of his cigar.

I was silent. I could neither feel my heart beating nor could I tell if were breathing. In that pregnant pause, all things were possible.

Then, he finished the thought.

"Zombies."

All at once, everything returned. The sweat, the panicked heart, the burning of cold air in my lungs. Air that seemed devoid of oxygen. Air that seemed like 100% smoke and brain fart.

"Z…" I cleared my throat, "Zombies?"

"What if, instead of some dumb lonely bitch, she's a hot ass-kicker, and instead of lost children, it's zombies."

"I don't understand… there are a million zombie movies…"

"And why do you think that is?" Pace nodded slowly, a smirk on his lips as if he'd just said the most clever thing since E = MC2.

"Oh, yeah!" I nodded, my voice raised, "Yeah! Why don't I write a zombie movie?"

I stood quickly, sending the metal chair clattering to the floor. Pace's eyes widened once more.

"Hey, there's some fertile ground. Fertile as a fucking cemetery plot!" I shouted, throwing the pages of my beloved screenplay in the fat monster's face.

I thrust my fists into the desk, my face close to his.

"Zombies! Oh, holy shit! Why didn't I think of that? Let's see, we've had SLOW zombies… FAST zombies… zombies on PLANES and BOATS and with GOATS and in MOATS."

I was shaking all over, spittle ejecting from my lips.

"Hey, what about zombies in HATS? Huh? Maybe that one hasn't been done. Maybe we do a movie without FAST or SLOW zombies, but ones that walk DIAGONALLY like fucking BISHOPS!"

"Bishops?" he muttered, aghast. He must've been thinking of the other kind.

"Maybe our zombies ROLL everywhere! Like armadillos or pill bugs. Maybe our zombies climb to the top of fucking HILLS and ROLL the fuck down, gathering all the other zombies into… into…"

Throwing my hands in the air, I turned away from the desk and started for the door.

"Into giant, bloody, gore orbs!"

I grabbed the doorknob and wrenched it hard, nearly pulling it out of its socket. As I flung the door open with a crack, I heard Pace behind me, muttering again.

"Gore obs… gore orbs…" he murmured, before finally shouting out, "GORBS!"

I froze in my tracks.

"Gorbs…?" I repeated, turning back once more. I was incredulous.

"Gorbs!" Pace shouted again, his eyes alight like those of a child on Christmas morning.

He rushed to the window and flung it open.

"GORBS!!" Pace called out to the crew members and production assistants milling around the back lots, "Gorbs! Gorbs!!"

Mystified, not sure if he was playing some sort of idiotic joke on me, I watched as Pace ran to the center of the room and took a few steps back. It looked like he was about to run past me, out of his own office.

"Here we go!" he gleefully shrieked.

With that, he took several quick steps forward, rolled himself into a fat little ball, and barreled through the door like a runaway boulder… head over ass over head over ass…

Stunned, I rushed to watch him roll off. In the waiting room, he collided with the Receptionist, who was taken by surprise.

"Ghrrbs!" came Pace's muffled voice… muffled by his own stomach…

He sort of half-rolled away from the woman at the desk, who was now as wide-eyed and excited as he had been… when I could see his face. Worse yet, I could see Pace's pale, doughy skin…

I could see it merging with her legs like grilled cheese pulling away from the toast.

"Gorbs?" she cried out, before folding over backward, wrapping herself around the meaty sphere that had once been my boss. "Gorbs!!"

Across the room, Harold Peets… that weasely little prick… he stood up from the guest sofa and ran full-tilt at the two of them. Apparently, he wanted to be a part of what was going down.

Splat! Peets landed against the growing, quivering mass of indiscernible body parts. He cast me an eerie look of excitement as his face dissolved a bit into the Receptionist's stomach.

Suddenly, with no visible outer catalyst, the rounded ball that now contained three human beings rolled back, forth, and through the glass front door with a hail of glimmering shards.

I moved through Pace's office, my legs unsteady and my mind going black from confusion and fear. At the window, I watched the pink sphere, dotted with bits of hair, clothing, eyes and mouths.

I watched it as it rolled through the lot. Workers filtered toward the thing as it passed, bolting at it like lemmings before getting rolled under its increasing weight. The thing was like a steamroller, though it left behind no trace of its victims.

I leaned on the window frame, and all I could do was watch.

I watched the thing… the "Gorb"… as it rolled along. Asymmetrical. Massive. It rolled through the front gates of the movie studio and out into the streets. After a while, I lost sight of it among the buildings… though I could still hear the rumble.

As much as I hated Pace, and as much as I was sickened by the sight of that thing, I had to admit one simple fact.

It was something that hadn't been done before.

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