Excerpt: Mushrooms and Anchovies in the Forest of Lost Souls

"Well, if it's not one threat, it's another," Anchovy muttered, looking about the room. "Let's see, then... who should we kill first?"
"Who?" Mushroom said with a snort. "I like that you classify zombies as actually human. That's a tad silly, isn't it?"
"Shut up," Anchovy muttered. "Let me think." And think, she did. And while she thought, she took a good look around the room.
They appeared to be in an apothecary, hence the odd smells that were prevalent thereabouts. They saw jars of various organic remedies and healing thingies. Thingies like flowers and herbs. Zombies were absolutely everywhere. Oddly enough, they all noticed that all of the zombies were wearing pure white lab coats.
"This is a little weird," Bridget said quietly.
"Hello, there!" called a zombie. What.
"That zombie is speaking to us," said Anchovy. "What."
"Please come over here. Don't be shy. We won't bite," said the zombie. Then all of the zombies in the immediate area burst into a fit of raucous laughter. The group looked at one another and shrugged.
"If things get out of hand, we can always kill them," Anchovy whispered. The others tried desperately not to snicker, and they all moved over to the zombie who was beckoning. This zombie was also smiling in a way that would normally be considered friendly. Normally. But he was a zombie, so... yeah. He had a gouge taken out of the side of his face, and one could quite plainly see his jawbone and teeth from there. He wore a nametag that read "Dr. Zoombosis".
"Hi there!" said Dr. Zoombosis. "Welcome to the Zombie Apothecary." Anchovy raised an eyebrow.
"Zombie Apothecary?" she asked, confused.
"Indeed," said Dr. Zoombosis with a nod. "This is a pocket dimension in the forest. This pocket dimension is based on the premise of one man, named Frank Tillwicker, who easily commits malapropisms, particularly between the words apocolypse and apothecary."
"...Oh," said Anchovy. "That's interesting."
"Isn't it?" said the zombie with a bizarre smile. "You see, all of these pocket dimensions are made up of random concepts thought up by random people in random worlds and planes."
"Really?" asked Anchovy. "Then I wonder who thought up the pirate one, and what it was based on."
"What are you talking about?" asked Dr. Zoombosis. "There is no pirate dimension." Anchovy got this disturbing feeling deep in her stomach that somewhere, the pirate dimension had suddenly ceased to be. That sent chills up her spine.
"So, what if I think about rat squirrel crickets flying in the seas of the great grey bat?" suggested Dane.
"Have you been using again, beloved?" Bridget asked with a frown.
"Shut up," said Dane.
"Yes, somewhere, a pocket dimension may have just been created. But you know, that doesn't mean you'll find it in this forest," said the doctor.
"Why is that?" asked Dane.
"Well, that would take a long time to explain. But let us say for now that there are any number of dimensions, planes, and worlds that the dimension could pop up in. Why, the place Frank comes from isn't even a real dimension. It's a dimension made up of dimensions that others thought up, stacked on top of one another," the doctor concluded. Anchovy paused.
"So, not only is this place completely not real and not connected in any way except for the whole pocket dimension business to our own world, but we're not even really in existence here?" she asked.
"Precisely," said the doctor with an almost pleasant smile. Except he was a zombie, so it wasn't really pleasant.
"That's terribly strange to think of," said Anchovy.
"Isn't it?" asked the doctor. "It plum scares the crap out of me!" he chuckled. No one else did. For some reason. Jerks.
"In any event, you might want to be careful, as we're having a pandemic here," the doctor continued. Anchovy raised an eyebrow.
"A pandemic?" she asked. The doctor nodded.
"Indeed. We're having a flu pandemic. It's been rather ridiculous. Good thing we're all undead, or otherwise we'd be suffering as well," he said.
"What sort of pandemic, exactly?" Mushroom asked. He was answered when a pig walking on two legs walked through the door.
"Uh," said Bridget. Everyone noticed that Eileen was rather silent. This was more than likely due to what Anchovy had said to her earlier. "That's a pig, walking on two feet."
"It's a rather bizarre strain of flu," said the zombie, shaking his head. "We've never seen anything quite like it before."
"It turns people into pigs?" asked Bridget.
"It seems to," Dr. Zoombosis said with a nod. "We're not calling it anything for now. The only thing that really seems to help cure it is a small potion we've concocted. The flu is only affected by people who are, well, completely living. Since we're undead, we don't suffer from it. But... you're all alive, you might--oh dear." The doctor shook his head. "I see you're already suffering." Anchovy looked at Mushroom and they both screamed really loudly.
Mushroom had a pig's nose sprouting before him. Anchovy's ears were turning into little pink piggie ears. And Eileen was growing a curly little tail.
"We've got the swine flu!" Anchovy screamed.
"Oh for God's sake," Bridget snapped. "Don't panic."
"Not to worry," said Dr. Zoombosis with a smile. "You don't belong in this dimension in any event. If you take one of these potions, you will be cured of the symptoms and transported back to where you came from. But if you take the other one, you will turn into a pig and stay here until you're butchered for bacon."
"Er, wait. What?" said Anchovy shortly. "Are you even kidding me? We have to guess which one we have to take?"
"Yep," said Dr. Zoombosis.
"Why?" asked Mushroom in a decidedly more nasal voice. His pig's nose was fully developed, and his hairline was rapidly receding.
"I don't really know," Dr. Zoombosis admitted. "I just know that the last person to defy The Rules burst into flames and burned for a good three hours before he actually died."
"Oh," said Dane.
"Yeah."
"I can see why you follow The Rules, then."
"Indeed."
Dr. Zoombosis produced a pair of potions from behind his pharmaceutical counter. One was red and one was blue.
"Oh no," groaned Eileen and Anchovy in unison. They glanced at each other awkwardly, then glanced away.
"what is it?" asked Dane, leaning forward to look. His eyes suddenly shrank and grew slightly more close together, like a piggy's.
"It's that classic question, isn't it?" muttered Anchovy. "The red one or the blue one."
"I didn't think that applied to potions," Mushroom observed, intrigued. "Well, then. I wonder which it is."
"It's always blue," said Anchovy.
"It's always red," said Eileen, at the exact same time. Neither of them said anything after that.
"Well, I'm not sure about you two, but I seem to remember there being something about the blue one, and then the red one," said Dane. Anchovy stared at him.
"But Dr. Zoombosis said that one of them will kill us," she said.
"Indeed," said Dane.
"I don't follow," Anchovy muttered flatly.
"One of them will," said Dane with a grin. "But both of them won't." Anchovy grinned slowly in reply.
"Dad," she said, "you have just impressed me now more than you have at all so far."
"Thanks!" said Dane. "I think." Bridget kissed his cheek.
"Well done, dear," she said. "I think that in order to test this theory, though, you should be the one to do it first." Dane stared at her.
"But... what if I die?"
"Then we know you were wrong." Dane stared at her a bit longer.
"...Won't you be upset?"
"Of course I will, dearest. But you know, at least I'll know what NOT to do." Bridget smiled sweetly.
"You can be a very evil bitch, Bridget. Did you know that?"
"You knew that the day you married me, Dane."
There was a moment of silence, and Anchovy bit her lip. She glanced at Dr. Zoombosis, who was remaining annoyingly silent, and wasn't helping in the least. Then, Dane grabbed the blue potion, and then took a brief draught of it. He grabbed the red potion, and took a quick sip of that as well. There was a moment's delay, and then Dane started to power puke everywhere. That is to say, he vomited violently. He barfed behemently. Behement isn't a word so I'll fix that later.
"Dad?" Anchovy gasped, running to his side. Just like that, though, he vanished. "Is he all right?" Anchovy asked, glaring at Dr. Zoombosis. The doctor chuckled.
"Your father is far cleverer than you give him credit for," he said. "Well done on his part. The flavor of the potions together is quite unlike anything you will ever have tasted, I warn you. This is why he was so violently ill. Did you know that your father is the first person in five hundred years to answer that puzzle correctly?"
"You have been having this pandemic for five hundred years?" Anchovy asked as her hair disappeared altogether and was replaced by far shorter hairs. She made a face.
"It's a living," said the doctor with a shrug. "Keep the people in fear, keep your pocketbook full."
"You're evil."
"I try."
Bridget was the next to take the potions, then Eileen, then Mushroom. Like Dane, they were all violently, violently ill before disappearing. Then it was Anchovy's turn.
"Beware of the other pocket dimensions," said the doctor. "I just wanted to tell you that."
"Why me?" Anchovy asked.
"Because you're the one with the most to lose." Anchovy stared at him for a moment, then grabbed the blue potion.
"It's been a pleasure," she said. She then squealed loudly, not unlike a pig. "Better take this fast. Anyway, enjoy yourself over here, at your... zombie apothecary."
"Thank you," said the zombie doctor pleasantly. "It was nice meeting you." Anchovy tipped the blue potion back and drank from it, then the red. Suddenly, the most bizarre of flavors washed through her mouth.
It was like licking a skunk. And then licking it after it was dead for five days.
She couldn't help it. She was hopelessly sick. And then she disappeared.