“Lots of things rhyme with bush,” said Randall. “You're not helping me.”
“And it starts with the sixteenth letter of the alphabet,” Abner told him.
“If I had time to go through the sixteen letters, I wouldn't have bothered to come back here to question you guys. Please tell me so I can get to work and not waste any more time?”
* * * *
“PUSH THE WALL, IDIOT!” Dale shouted.
“You gave it away!” whined Abner.
“Thanks,” said Randall. “I don't see why that was so difficult.” He went back down the stairs, down the hallway, and into the right path. He gave the wall a good push, and it fell over, revealing six paths containing approximately seventy-five sub-paths.
He began to walk straight ahead, realizing that it would take about ten seconds to get hopelessly lost in this place, even if the walls didn't blurmple. “Hey, Bull Creature!” he called out again. “Mind saving us both a lot of time and letting me know where you are?”
“Nyahh, nyahh!” cried a distant, moderately bovine-sounding voice. “You can't catch me! Neener neener neener!”
“Let's just get together for a chat!” Randall suggested. “I'm sure there's a way we can work this out without either of us losing our lives!”
Suddenly the Bull Creature burst out of one of the passages. It grabbed Randall by the neck, lifted him a foot off the ground, and slammed him into the wall hard enough to make his lips rattle, knocking the torch out of his hand. It looked just like a bull, except it was standing upright, and it had a sphere of fluff on the end of its tail like a poodle.
“Thought I was further away, didn't ya?” sneered the creature. It raised its hand, revealing sharp claws. “How about a nice game of Name That Organ?”
“Listen, Mr. Bull, I have no desire to cause you any harm! What I was thinking is that maybe you have some extra hearts lying around in your previous victims that I could borrow!”
The creature shook its head. “Nope. The only heart you're going to see is your own.”
“Please! I have to save my one true love! And a bug. And this annoying guy named Jack. And this incompetent guy named Toby.”
“True love, huh? I don't believe in the stuff. No woman wants to be seen at a public gathering with a bull creature.”
“Perhaps you could try somebody in a cow motif?”
“I don't speak cow. At least, when I say ‘moo’ they just stare at me. Dullards, all of them!”
Without warning, Randall drove his knee up toward the creature's groin. It missed completely, but the mere thought of what might have occurred was enough to cause the creature to drop him. Randall took off running down one of the paths, making several turns as he did so.
“Go ahead and run!” shouted the Bull Creature. “You have to fight me sooner or later!”
Randall, whose choice of turns had accidentally taken him right back to where he'd started, rammed into the bull at top speed. He felt a sensation similar to if his brain had been jettisoned into his stomach. With a weak groan, he staggered around for a few seconds, unknowingly performing a move that would bring millions of dvorkins to a young dancer years in the future, then collapsed.
“Death, please,” he requested.
The Bull Creature knelt down next to him. “You're so pathetic it's cute. Let me know when you want to try again.”
Randall grabbed the creature's ankle. It pulled its foot free, then smashed that very same appendage into Randall's face. Even without the hoof aspect, it would have been painful.
“Yep,” said the creature, “they just keep sending them, and I just keep kickin’ their cracks. What a boring life I lead.”
Randall forced himself to stand up, then rushed at the creature again. It grabbed him by the mouth with one hand, by the navel with the other, and began to rapidly spin around. After ten seconds it let Randall go, sending him crashing into the wall. The bull, now terribly dizzy, began to stagger around, until it fell to the ground as well.
“Oh, jeez ... why do I do that?” the creature asked.
Randall did a quick count of body parts that weren't hurting. Since he could come up with two, his hair and his eyelashes, he got up again and stood over the creature.
“Do you give up?” he asked.
The bull creature answered in the negative by jamming its fist upward into Randall's gut. It was a hard enough punch that its hand got stuck, and it took some effort to pull it free. Randall made a noise approximating “Mmffffgrrroooo” and waited for his eyes to start pointing toward the outside of his head.
The creature stood up and looked down at Randall with disdain. “I've fought some unworthy opponents in my time, but you top them all. You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
“I can't,” Randall managed to say. “I hurt too much.”
“Well, the great thing about pain is that you can always have a little more.” It picked Randall up by the hair, subtracting one more item from his body-parts-that-don't-hurt list, and threw him against the other wall. As he struck the floor, his foot landed on top of the torch.
“Ow! Ow!” said Randall, jumping up in a burst of adrenaline. “Bad pain! Bad pain!”
And then, seeing his chance, he slammed his foot into the creature's groin, this time connecting with an almost supernatural accuracy. The flame instantly transferred from foot to groin.
“GAAAAHHHH!” the creature shouted.
It began bouncing around, shrieking, trying to pat out the flames. Then it clutched at its chest and let out a gasp.
“Oooh, my heart!”
The creature fell face-down on the floor, then lay motionless. Randall prodded it with his non-smoldering foot. The Bull Creature was, as far as he could tell, dead. Unfortunately, its heart remained on the inside of its body.
* * * *
“NO, NO, NO, no, no!” said Abner. “We have to see it! We can't just take your word for it!”
“People have lied to us before,” Dale explained. “And it wounds me inside.”
Randall clenched his fists with frustration. “Look, the bull is dead! All you have to do is walk ten feet into the lousy maze and you'll see it!”
“Nope, sorry,” said Abner. “Gotta have the heart.”
“I don't have anything to dig with! Won't you morons just follow me down there for a few seconds so I can show you?”
“Not if you're going to be grumpy about it, no.”
Randall seriously considered pounding his head against the wall, but in his current condition there was no guarantee that the skin would hold everything inside.
“Just lend me a knife, or some false teeth, anything!”
“Nope. Gotta follow the rules. Weren't you paying attention to the lecture? We'd hate to have to make you listen to it all over again.”
After glaring at both of them to ensure they knew he was not in any way pleased with the current situation, Randall went back down the stairs and into the area with the Bull Creature.
Except that the creature was gone.
“Oh, defecation,” said Randall.
The creature burst out of hiding and caught Randall in a bear hug. “I'm gonna crush you like an elderly woman!” it snarled, as it squeezed tighter and tighter.
Seeing no other option, Randall jerked his face forward and bit the creature on the cheek with all the dental prowess he could muster, filling his mouth with the taste of raw beef. The creature let out a squeal and began hopping up and down, trying in vain to dislodge Randall's teeth. Finally it pried him away and threw him against the wall once more.
“Ah, that stung!” said the creature, feeling the imprint on its cheek. “And your teeth aren't even straight—I look like some kind of freak!”
Randall got up, feeling as if he were leaving several bones behind, and went down one of the paths. He wove his way around in what seemed to be a circle, and emerged right behind the bull.