BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH.3 - STICK IT TO ME

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH.3 - STICK IT TO ME

by Tomara Armstrong

The fact that you’ve never been able to hold your liquor or hide your admiration for curls and curves has compromised your human form, and you’re quickly turning into a writhing ball of amorous tentacles, allowing your chains to fall to the floor with ease.

Sally drops her stiletto in shock as a volcano of firewater erupts from the depths of your stomach, projecting the ball gag into her face, knocking her to the ground—unconscious, and covering her with sickness. You crawl across the floor, reaching for her, sliding your many arms over her sticky body, trying to remember the traditional dance of your species. It’s been a while, so you improvise.

What am I doing?

Sobriety smacks you in the face, and instantly you return to human form. You would be embarrassed if Sally wasn’t passed out. You’re about to pat her cheek to rouse her, when you remember that a few short moments ago, she had you tied, gagged, and was tormenting you. She even called you, Rachorin—a name few know or dare to whisper on your home planet.

You reach into your cupboard and pull out a glowing syringe. Hoping to immobilize Sally for questioning before the sheriff arrives, you stick her in the neck and plunge the contents into her bloodstream.

Her eyes pop open as you prop her up beside you on the floor. “What have you done?” she says, searching you with her eyes—the rest of her body frozen.

“I’m simply restraining you…the easy way.” You pull her toward you, wrapping your arms around her and kick at the chains that once held you captive.

“I wasn’t going to hurt you,” She coughs. Her face starts to turn an odd shade of purple and her eyes bulge. “It’s starting.”

“What?” you ask, as Sally begins to cough and gag, spitting foam and blood. The serum you administered was meant for your kind, you haven’t tested it on this type of hybrid, and it appears she is having some sort of adverse reaction. Her arms begin to flail, smacking you in the face. She falls on top of you, pinning you against the wall as she continues to spasm. She’s much heavier than you anticipated.

“Be still.” You try to wiggle toward the counter and feel for your medicine bag, but Sally makes it difficult as she continues to flop around on top of you. Grabbing the handle of your leather bag, you give it a good tug and pull it to the floor, spilling its contents in the puddle of sick.

“Come on, come on!” You attempt to fish for something to use, but everything slips and slides in the mess.

She’s bucking now, gurgling and hissing, and a strange smoke begins to rise from her head and chest. This is new—not something your species experiences, and while you’re fascinated with this discovery, Sally begins to make an even stranger noise.

Tickingard that beforenglder'nd. and organs, and releasing your stinking ash in the wind.pasm.g--anything e clicking a?

“Great,” you belch as Sally begins to pulse and glow, ticking.

Your ears pop.

Silence.

Time moves in slow-motion as you close your eyes and cover your head.

Millions of particles ignite and scream, evaporating the breath from your lungs and melting your eyeballs in their sockets. White light swallows you up, devouring your pseudo flesh and crumbling your alien organs, leaving the wind to disperse of your ashy remains as it pleases. 

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH.2 - SHOOTOUT AT THE E.T. CORRAL

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH.2 - SHOOTOUT AT THE E.T. CORRAL
by Jax Java

You urgently lead Sally toward Maggie, instructing Maggie to see Sally to the secret tunnel leading to the abandoned gold mine, “Get her out of here as fast as you can!” 

You barricade the door to the church and push as many pews as you can against it.  The hooves have slowed and you can hear voices shouting outside the steps.  You rush over to the altar and flip it over, revealing the secret cache of guns used to protect the church from marauders.  Loading up your tentacles with the finest weaponry God could make, you look up and see the two women staring at you with mouths gaping open.

“What are you waiting for?  GET OUT OF HERE NOW!”

The ladies turn and go to the preacher’s confessional, turning the lamp hanging by the door, which reveals a hidden panel entry to the tunnel.  With another glance of fear over their shoulders, they walk into the darkness. 

Relieved when you see the panel slide shut, you stride up the bell tower steps, taking them three at a time until you emerge in the blazing sun before the Biff and his posse in the courtyard below.

“I’m going to show you a real life close encounter of the third kind!” you shriek, raising your tentacles and taking aim.

The posse below raise their guns in retort. “Give her back and walk away,” Biff yells down the barrel of his gun.

“Not going to happen, not ever,” you yell back, cocking the guns and glaring against the sun.

“Game over! What are we going to do now? What are we gonna do?” Biff screamed back.

“How about we make a campfire, sing a couple of songs?” you sneer as you open fire, firing round after round of bullets in a storm of lead, gunsmoke and despair at the posse.

The posse dives and rolls out of range, firing back. You barely feel the bullets hitting you, as you continue firing until you run out of bullets.  You are woozy, your wounds mortal, you sway in the sun on top of the bell tower. You smile smugly to yourself knowing Sally is on her way to safety. Looking toward the sky and longing for home, you sway forward, over the railing and down the roof, dead before you hit the ground in the courtyard.

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH1. - BLARDETH BLEEPS

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH1. - BLARDETH BLEEPS
By Nandy Ekle

“You –“ You stop your reply suddenly, aware that your voice sounds too much like the high-pitched beeps of your species. Clearing your throat and hoping the sheriff didn’t notice, you restart. “You go on, Sheriff. I, um, I have some things I need to, um, gather up for this.” You find your gaze going toward the shape on the table, but try to make the sheriff think you’re looking at the cabinet next to it. “I’ll be right behind you.”

“Well, hurry it up. I don’t wanna get in the middle a’ sumppin’ I don’t know nuthin’ ‘bout.”

“I will. Just go on and I’ll be right there.” You pick up a carpet bag and stuff a candlestick, an old shoe and a pillow inside.  The sheriff watches you grab another couple of random objects, scratches his balding pate, and walks out muttering under his breath.

“Galdern . . . sonsa’ . . . whatever.”

As soon as the sheriff is gone, you turn back to the body on the table. It moans again and the tentacle moves.

“Blardeth, is that you,” you ask.

“BBBEEEPPP . . .” he answers.

“It IS you! Waddya’ know!”

Blardeth opens his eyes and looks at you. “Claddeph,” he gasps.  His eyes are full of an emotion you take for love. “Your outfit is amazing.” He blinks and shakes his head. “But that’s not why I’m here. I had to come tell you . . .” He trails off.

“Easy now. Take it easy.”

His head shakes quickly. You hear the sloshing of brain water and thank our lucky stars everything is okay in Bardeth’s head.

“No. You don’t understand. You’re . . . Oh Minithetet! My arm is on fire!”

Blushing at his strong language, you gently take his tentacle in your had. It’s beginning to turn back into an arm to match the rest of the body, but there’s a deep black burn covering the flesh between the wrist and the elbow.

“Leave that alone. I’m not long for this world now anyway.”

“Aw, c’mon, Bardeth, old pal. I’m a DOCTOR here.” You smile proudly and point to the certificate on the wall. Your writing hand cramped for a week after copying the certificate design from the library book.

“No. Leave it. It’s my prize to take back home.” He yanks his arm away from you, grabs the front of your shirt and pulls you in close to his face. You can smell the sweet perfume of the sewer, the sexiest smell your species knows. You tell yourself you don’t have time for love right now. “You’re in danger, my old friend. I was comin’ here to tell you that when . . .” His face grows greener. “Listen. Do you hear that?” His green face looks toward the door and his four eyes (you can see the two natural eyes under his two human eyes) become as large as whisky shot glasses. “It’s too late! They’re here!” He turns his face from the door to you. Your human noses are nearly touching. Then his mouth opens as big as a cavern. “RUN!” And he collapses back onto the table.

Your human guts turn to ice cubes and your natural guts turn to embers. Then you hear it. The galloping of horses and the shouts of men—not ‘your people’ but human men. You look around the room for any kind of weapon and find nothing. You have a rifle in the back room, but there’s no time. The feet are scuffling around on the wooden sidewalk outside your door. You decide the only thing to do is unmask and defend yourself naturally. You drop the human skin and stand there as your true self.

Suddenly the door blasts open and a group of men stand there looking at you, sewer smelly tentacles and all. You open your moth to tell them who you really are but the explosion of the frontman’s rifle cuts through the air. Your head jerks back and you fall to the floor. As you lay there you see your human skin wadded up in a heap next to you. The blood running between you and the disguise is blue. Licking your lips you taste the sweetness of your interplanetary blood. Your eyes roll up to see an abstract shape of blue blood splattered on the wall behind you. You never knew you were such a good artist.

“We ain’t havin’ no more a’ your kind ‘round here,” a voice above you shouts. But there’s something else. You could swear you hear a few high-pitched beeps and clicks underneath that voice. But it doesn’t matter now. The men are disappearing; the room is going dark; the sounds are fading—all but the beeps you know you heard in the voice.

But even that is finally gone.

YOU DIED.

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH1. - RAYGUNS AND RAWHIDE

BLAZING SADDLES, SMOKING TENTACLES CH.1 - RAYGUNS AND RAWHIDE
By Scott Perkins


The fellow on the table isn’t going anywhere, so you decide to accompany the sheriff out to the abandoned mine to see what your fellow beings are up to and why they’re in your territory.

You nod the sheriff toward the door and when he turns his back to leave, you slip your Bolt Piecemaker ray gun out of the drawer and into your holster. As you strap up, you feel better with the polished brass and ceramic hanging on your hip; as their marketing transmissions like to say, “Quar’phon made cephalopods, Bolt made them evil.” You’re a terrible shot, but you don’t need to be a very good shot with a Bolt Piecemaker; aim in the general direction of your opponent and make him, his close kin, distant relations, and part of the landscape behind him go away.

If there are more like the guy on the table out in that mine, you aren’t taking any chances. (Bolt can make all the claims he wants, your people were already evil before he invented his ray gun.)
The sheriff shouts through the door for you to quit dawdling and get the lead out. You’re not sure what that means, but he seems impatient, so you hurriedly jab the unconscious creature with a hypodermic full of blowfish toxin, just enough to keep him from wandering off before you get back.

The sheriff has brought the horses around and is waiting outside the door alongside his deputy with the teeth like a Missouri mule. You feel your skin ripple in the heat as you come out into the high plains oven that these humans jokingly call a town.

“You reckon you’re gonna need that hogleg, son?” the sheriff nods at your Piecemaker.
“I reckon I don’t want to need it and not have it with me,” you reply.  The deputy titters nervously and hands you the reins of your mount.

You can feel the eyes of the townsfolk following you as you head out of town and you do your best to return the stares with a friendly nod and a touch of your brim.

Thankfully, the glare of the sun is so intense that you’re not the only one in town keeping your hat pulled low. The problem is that it means anyone around you could be hiding their ears, or their tentacles, or four, maybe five extra eyes…

It’s easy to feel outnumbered in these situations and you catch yourself thinking that maybe you should’ve grabbed the rifle too.

A few miles outside of town, you finally begin to relax. The sheriff seems lost in his own thoughts and you’re damned if the deputy has any, so you’re left with yours and that’s fine with you.  As the trail takes you across the barren stretches of brown scrub land, you find yourself in the lead.

That’s fine with you. You know the area well from when you scouted it from the air when you first arrived. The rocky terrain rises steadily and then fractures into gullies and eventually canyons where prospectors have frittered away their lives in the search for gold, burrowing into the landscape like a colony of heat-addled prairie dogs.

You can hear your companions talking in low voices behind you as you enter the base of the washout that leads up to the hole in the ground which once generously gave up gold, apparently in return for a steady influx of rusted pick axes and rotting minecarts.

You draw up to wait for the sheriff and his deputy, your horse dancing nervously as sounds whisper across the rusting junk, sounds that are not of the earth.

What the hell have these idiots been up to? How hard can it be to blend in with a bunch of fleshy bipeds so primitive that they think the telegraph qualifies as high technology? You didn’t choose this planet for its amenities.

The sheriff arrives as you dismount. He’s alone and looking back, you can see the deputy off his horse with a Winchester in his hands. The bucktoothed buckaroo hightails it back down the gully and you scramble up one face of the wash, seeking higher ground.

“Figure we can use high cover, and there ain’t no need for the kid to see what shouldn’t be seen.” The sheriff marks the dust at your feet with his tobacco juice to drive the point home. “Hear what I’m sayin, Doc?”

 “You don’t want your town sullied by my… kind.”

“We have an understanding, then.” The sheriff drops to the ground and ties his horse loosely to a nearby bit of scrubby tree. “You, I don’t mind. You help folks out and hold up your end. But these troublemakers are gonna make trouble for all of us and I won’t have it, Doc, I just won’t.”

This seems a bit unfair. What does all this have to do with you anyway? Just because a fella has a certain kind of skin or a certain number of tentacles doesn’t mean he’s responsible for everyone else who does too.

“Get in there and find out what they want, but anyone who comes out of there sporting more than two legs and two arms is getting drilled.”

“That’s some negotiation strategy you have there, Sheriff.”

“No point in beatin’ the devil round the stump, Doc,” the lawman replies. “I have the citizens of my town to protect and they’re simple folk, salt of the earth… you know, morons. They don’t accept strangeness very well.”

There’s certainly no point arguing with that fact.

You came all the way out here, you might as well go through with it and anyway you’re not entirely sure at this point that the sheriff is entirely ready to count you among “his town’s” human citizens.

You ease your Piecemaker in its holster and continue alone the last few yards toward the mouth of the mine. The creature at the door isn’t in any form that the sheriff would offer a room at the Grand Hotel. The mass of waving tentacles greets you silently, one tentacle extends to caress the tip of your nose and then loses interest in you once you’re identified as of the correct flavor for entry.

As you slip past the guard and venture into the welcome cool of the mine, your eyes adjust to different wavelengths of light and you begin to notice carvings on the walls of the mineshaft. Pictograms you haven’t seen since you left home trace spirals across the walls and ceiling of the shaft, telling a story that’s not going to be considered good news by the sheriff and his town.

As you descend into the darkness and damp, you are reminded of home, and it makes you edgy. You pull your ray gun fully out of the holster. The weight of it feels good in your hand and far too small and ineffectual to make a good negotiating tool. If the door guard isn’t bothering with human form, then whatever the rest are up to won’t be good for anyone else who has taken to walking on two legs. Things might get interesting.

“Cthoth-hurragh ctchuck t’ut-t’ut ftaghn!” A harsh voice cuts through the silence. “Cthoth-hurragh ctchuck tut-tut ftaghn!”

You step into a large chamber and stumble to a halt. Whether this space was dug out for the men working the old gold mine to gather and watch sporting events or the mine had broken through to a natural cavern and made improvements, you can’t rightly say. The uneven floor is heaped all about with piled backfill dug out of the tunnels that open in all directions from this central chamber.  Several of the nearby heaps of slag have an open space in the center, being watched with rapt attention by an undulating crowd of miscellaneous nightmares of scale, slime, and tentacle.

The spectators, though, aren’t what make your skin go rubbery and cold. A massive creature stands at the center of the watchers with a smaller human-sized creature held above what should by all rights be its head. As you watch, the creature shouts “Cthoth-hurragh ctchuck tut-tut ftaghn!” once again and brings the human form smashing down on the rocks.

The spectators take up the chant and soon they are chanting just one, ominous word. “Mon-go” they shout. “Mon-Go! Mon-Go! Mon-Go!” the name of an ancient terror out of the depths of your race’s darkest nightmares.

As you backpedal back down the tunnel, the darkness echoes with that ancient name. The ray gun feels useless in your nerveless fingers. You have to get out of there, you have to…

Your back slams into something solid and you realize you’ve run into a dead end. The chants are getting louder and the faint sussuration of suckers and feelers dragging obese bodies across stone floors follows. The tunnel in front of you gets darker as the Mongo approaches.

Your Bolt Piecemaker rocks in your hand as you empty it at the approaching terror. The flare of the death ray scours the pictograms from the stone walls and burns the hydrogen and methane out of the air, sending waves of fire and smoke down every tunnel and crevice. The rumble of the collapsing mine are accompanied by the realization that even if you bring the entire mountain down on its head, it’ll just make it mad.

You pray to your dark gods that the sheriff has the good sense to run as the dark hand of the Mon-Go reaches out to you.

Whether it’s the falling mountain that kills you or the creature is irrelevant, you’re jelly at the bottom of a deep, dark hole.

And that’s just not a good look on anybody.

ECOPOCALYPSE CH. 4 - I WANT MY DADDY

ECOPOCALYPSE CH. 4 - I WANT MY DADDY
By Nandy Ekle

He’s gone. Milo is gone. Your best friend’s death is like a sharp finger poking you right in the middle of your forehead. You’re sitting across from Madge and she’s just going on and on, talking about what you have to do to fix this, but all you can think about is the fact that Milo died in a stew of his own sewage.

“Hello?  Earth to Mr. Poopy President. Are you listening to me at all?”

You look up from where your eyes are fixated, staring at a brown stain under your fingernail. Where exactly had that brown stain come from? Was it from the flying fecal matter at your house as you ran away? And what about that running away thing? What kind of leader runs away from his problems?

You look up into Madge’s eyes. “What?”

“I said, what kind of a leader runs from his problem?”

A gasp blasts out of your mouth. Did she read your mind? You’re sure you thought the question up yourself; or did she plant it in your brain? Does she have psychic abilities you never knew about? And how come you never got a share of that?

“I, um . . .”

Her eyebrows are scrunched up and her mouth is posed in a pucker as if she actually expects you to say something intelligent.

The answer suddenly pierces through your consciousness. Screw it! Screw them all! Your business is tanked. Your reputation looks like the offending crap all over your house. Your best friend is dead. And now your sister demands you pay attention to her as if she were the smartest person in the world. You don’t need this. You don’t need any of it and you damn sure don’t have to put up with it.

You stand up and turn your back to her in mid-sentence.  “Go to hell,” you say as you walk toward the door.

“Get back here! We have to get this worked out!”

You run out the door and head for the stairs leading up to the roof. You need to get away just for a moment to mourn Milo, your mom, your career, your life. You need . . . fishing. Madge said your dad was on the yacht in the Pacific. You feel a sudden urge to pull on Daddy’s pant leg and beg to be hugged and rocked to sleep.

As you reach the roof you jump in the chopper and aim it toward the west, your main thought: “I want my daddy!” The sun glints off the water below you—or is it the water leaking from your eye?

Surprisingly, Dad’s boat is not far out on the sea and the size of the yacht makes it easy enough to spot. Lowering the copter to the deck you jump out of the aircraft. You see your sixty-year-old father running toward you.

“Dad!” You throw your arms out to him as you yell his name.

Instead of taking you in his arms for a comforting paternal hug, he pulls his fist back and punches you a hard one across your jaw. Rubbing your face, you look at the man who raised you. “What the?” You ask in a stunned tone.

“Get the hell off my boat, you murderer!”

“It wasn’t my fault! The lab substituted components in the formula! I didn’t do it! I swear!”

“You sold those things all over the world and got rich off people’s doody, boy. I don’t want your disease close to me. I don’t want anything to do with you again. Now get this confounded whirlybird off my boat before I throw you and your toy overboard.”

“But you’re my dad. You’re supposed to be on my side.” The man who had helped you build a Pine Derby race car for scouts when you were eight years old now looks as though he would harpoon you like a whale and gut you like a fish.

“My wife is gone, and your sister probably will be too if she keeps working with your zombies. Even the dog died. You’re no boy of mine.” He takes a couple of steps toward you. “I didn’t raise you to turn the world into sewer zombies.” 

As you stand there rubbing your jaw, your father grabs your arm, runs you to the side of the boat and pushes you over. You hit the water and the only thought in your head is that the brown stain under your fingernail will finally be washed away.

The rhythmic sound of a cello plays from somewhere in the air. Your dad looks not in your direction, but past you. He laughs and points, and you’re afraid he’s gone crazy and will jump in and drown you.

As you start to swim toward the yacht, the cello music gets louder and more intense. Then a new thought jumps into your mind as you feel something massive brush against your leg. You know that music! As the identity of the sound gels in your mind you see the circle of red around you grow larger. Suddenly your left leg is cold. LEG? What leg? You realize your left leg is missing and the blood is coming from you.

You open your mouth to scream for your daddy when the giant great white shark clamps on your other leg and pulls you under.

Oops...return to chapter 4

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - WE NEED A PLAN

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.3 - WE NEED A PLAN By Ryan Hunter

“This isn’t right,” you say.

“Damn skippy,” Milo says. “This bird should be stocked with, like, peanuts or something.”

You cut your eyes to him just long enough for him to know you aren’t in the mood for his jokes. “Sorry,” he mutters.

“We need a plan,” you say.

“We have a plan: go to Mexico.”

“We can’t do that.”

“Why, did they close the borders? How would you know that? I’m wearing the cans too and I haven’t heard anything,” Milo says, tapping the headphones he’s wearing over his ears.

“No, they haven’t closed the borders, at least not as far as I know. But we can’t leave.”

“Why can’t we?”

“ Milo , look out your window. Whatever’s happening down there, we caused that. That’s our fault.”

“You don’t know that,” Milo says. “Not for sure.”

You glare at Mio again but choose not to respond. Instead you say, “I’m going to set her down outside of the city and we’ll figure something out.”

“Where outside of the city?”

“I don’t know, outside of it.”

“ Mexico is outside of the city.” You shake your head, hoping Milo doesn’t notice the grin pulling at the corners of your mouth. “It is, I can show you on a map.”

You pull a little on the stick to adjust but the helicopter doesn’t respond. You pull a little harder but still nothing happens. “What the hell,” you mutter under your breath.

“That’s not the sort of expression one dreams of hearing from one’s pilot,” Milo says.

“It’s just… I don’t…” you mutter. You look under the instrument panel to find a nest of wires, frayed and intertwined. You look closer and notice the teeth marks on the brightly colored wax that once covered the wires.

There’s a shuffling in the back and you and Milo turn to see a woman with the same pale complexion and dead eyes as the others.

“Sara?” Mio says. “Hey, it’s Sara Tobin from HR. Fancy seeing you up here, Sara. What brings you?”

Sara digs under her flower skirt and comes out with a handful of feces. “Oh shit,” Milo says.

She raises her hand to fling it at him but the copter pitches, bolting from horizontal to vertical.

You and Milo, secured in your restraints, remain in your seats; Sara, however, is thrown to the back of the copter where the handle of a fire extinguisher impales the back of her skull.

“Oh my God!” Milo screams. “I think we just killed Sara!”

“Yeah,” you say, swallowing back the bile threatening to fill your mouth. “Well, we’ll have to put that on the list of things to worry about if we land.”

“You mean when we land.”

“Well, we’ll definitely land, just how we do it is anybody’s guess. I don’t have any control.”

Milo shrugs. “Just hit the B button.”

You pulled desperately at the stick trying to reengage it by force.

“Seriously, hit the B button,” Milo says.

“Dude, no matter how much you want your life to be like Xbox it just isn’t going to happen. There is no B button,” you yell.

“The hell there isn’t,” Milo says, flipping a cover you never knew existed to reveal a large red button marked with a B.

“Where did that come from?” you ask.

“I installed it,” Milo says, slamming his fist onto the button.

An artificial female voice flows from the headsets. “Hello, Milo, how can I be of assistance to you?”

“Is that…” you mutter, “is that Siri?”

“I’d thank you not to mention that bitch's name in my presence,” the voice says.

“Huh?” you mutter.

“I’d like to introduce you to Biri,” Milo says.

“Biri? Really?”

“Oh, come on, it’s funny,” Milo says.

“Well, what can Si… excuse me, Biri do?” you ask.

Milo turns to look at the control panel in general and says, “Biri?”
“Yes, Milo?”

“We’d very much like to not die.”

“I can understand the impulse,” Biri agrees.

“Could you please straighten us out and land just outside of the city?”

“Yes, where would you like to land outside of the city?”

“Do not say Mexico.”

“Very well,” Biri says, “I will not say Mexico.”

“Just set us down at the first possible place to the east of the city,” Milo says.

“Very well.”

The copter levels out and flies east as if there had never been a problem with the controls at all. You relax into your seat. “Biri, huh?” you ask Milo.

“Yup, pretty handy, huh?”

“I have to admit, I’m glad she’s here. That bitch comment was a bit surprising.”

Milo shrugs. “I like my ladies saucy.” He turns and looks back at Sara who is lying a heap, her life’s blood dark but streaked with yellow, pooling beneath her. “But not that kind of sauce. Blech.”

The copter touches down softly on a meadow just to the east of the city and the doors automatically swing open “You have arrived at your destination,” Biri says.

“Thank you, Siri,” you say out of habit.

The doors slam shut and Biri says, “I asked you not to use that name in my presence.” Buzz saws on retractable arms slid out of hidden panels in the walls. “I’m afraid I’ll have to punish you now.”

You look at Milo. “Buzz saws? Really?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he says.

“How could it possibly…?” You start to ask, but stop when a saw slices through Milo’s neck, causing his head to tumble to the floor.

As the blade begins to slice through the skin directly below your hairline you have time to think, “Damn you and your saucy wom—”

Oops...Return to Chapter 3

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.2 - TO THE DELOREAN!

ECOPOCALYPSE CH.2 - TO THE DELOREAN! By Annie Evett

You pound the table for emphasis. “ Listen up here, you bunch of sissies. You get paid the big bucks to react to shit like this. Do your freaking job.”

Milo bites his hand to stifle a giggle. The stress has obviously gotten to him.

“Where the hell is the Marketing team?”

A manicured hand shoots up in the back. “Maria Britanny from Marketing.”

You point at her. “Get a spin on this; blame the Chinese for their poor work practices and child labor factories. India can’t withdraw their contract. Remind them that most of the online and phone support from a large proportion of tech companies are routed to them, and they will lose billions if they do withdraw. Korea has problems with its whole weirdo government and hairstyles. Do something with that, will you?”

“Uh, the hairstyles of the government?” Someone clears his throat. “Are you talking about North Korea?”

“What?” You bluster. “Aren’t they the same place? North, South, not that different surely.”

The boardroom shuffles uncomfortably as a dozen sets of eyes bore into the table in front of them.

“What about Sweden?” quavers a question from the sides.

“I hate them because they all look so damned healthy and happy outdoors.” You puff your chest out, filled with an unnatural confidence. You feel like J.R. from the old Dallas show.

Paul Poppins from Public Relations glares across the table at the head of Marketing. “I think you’ll find that Public Relations will do a better job at negotiating those areas, rather than the gloss and pomp department.”

A shriek cuts the air as Maria’s manicured hands find their way around Paul’s throat.

“I don’t give a rats ass who does it. Make it so.” You look off into the distance, wishing you’d mentioned number two or tried for a better Pickard voice.

Todd Brammers taps on his iPad, darkening the room and illuminating the wide expanse of one of the walls. You wish he would use up to date equipment. He projects several channels of live news reports into spots around the wall. Images of tattered humanoids stumble across the wall. Wide-eyed reporters breathlessly relate to their audiences what they are experiencing—that is, until the shit-covered masses reach the TV crew and the camera is dropped, the operator is dragged away or fled. Real life re-enactments of the Blair Witch Project are relayed on multiple screens. Screams are cut off into gurgling, pathetic drowning sounds. You gulp.

“There is no way of making this go away with marketing OR public relations. Environaut is the cause for all of this. We need to shut down immediately and regroup under Chapter 11.”

You push your hands through your hair. You don’t even know what Chapter 11 is.

“Fine!” You yell. “ Do the Chapter 11 thing. Shut down production—but I still want my spin happening.” You cling to the J.R. image.

“Will you be coming with us then?” Scott Black, the Head of Mergers and Acquisitions, asks you.

“What? Me? No, Milo and I need to check out the Flux Capacitors and gamma reactors in the proton isolators. Science geek stuff. You know.”

Nods from around the room confirm that none of them understand what that means, but they are all relieved that they have a plan to execute without the CEO breathing down their necks.

“Come on Milo, we need to go.” You grab Milo's coat jacket and shove him through the door.

He explodes with laughter. “What the hell was that in there? Flux capacitors? And you know you still have shit on your forehead.”

You wipe it off. “If you’re not with me, go back to the boardroom and do whatever Chapter 11 is,” you fume. “This shit has gotten serious. I can’t understand what’s come unraveled and how it's happened so quickly.” You both stride toward the exit.

“So what's the plan, Kimo Sabe?”

“Get back to the DeLorean and just drive. I do my best thinking when I'm on the road.” Your mind is rattling off possibilities, reformulating the plans of the Environaut.

You and Milo climb into the car and exit the carpark. Hal waves as you leave, not bothering to stand. You are sure he is laughing behind the magazine in front of his face. The outer perimeter of the security fence surrounding the Smart EcoGen HQ is slowly filling with picketers. You drive out as quickly as you can, hoping they won't notice you.

“It can’t be the recycling processors,” you mumble.”That had been tested for years in the earlier versions.” You steer the car onto the freeway and headed south. If nothing else, a trip to Mexico would clear the mind.

“What does this thing do?” Milo pokes a covered switch.

“Surely the diagnostic console didn’t reboot after the—”

“Hey, if I push this, will anything happen?” Milo doesn't wait for an answer and pushes the red, candy-like button. The DeLorean accelerates suddenly. The speedometer slowly creeps up to 88 miles per hour.

“Did you say something about a Flux Capacitor?” Milo grins. ‘Don’t thank me now. Let's go back in time and fix this mess. Then you can shower me with gifts and double my salary.”

The body of the car begins to shake as the inside glows blue. You take your hands off the wheel. You paid a mint for the car, and the previous owner stressed its authenticity. You grin, suddenly thinking of all the dumbass things you are going to fix up on your trip back in time. You decide you will scrap the Environaut and introduce either the Wii or Xbox to the market years before the original developers have a whiff of an idea of the gaming platforms. Hell, you may decide to do both.

Dials on the dashboard spin. “Shit. We need to set a date. Let's set it for when we met at college, convince ourselves not to bother and —”

“Just set the date, idiot. We are nearly at 88 miles per hour.”

“And running out of clear road.” The freeway ends, and you enter suburbia.

The speedometer slowly creeps around as the car surges forward. Tiny blue lights flash within the cabin. You cover your eyes. “It's 88 miles an hour. So long present day. You suck!”

The Delorean slams into the wall of a low set apartment block. Glass splinters as the steering wheel drives its way through your chest. Your ribs shatter as your lungs burst from the sudden impact. Your neck whips back and forth, breaking in the process. It flops to the side as blood seeps out of your nose and mouth. Milo’s body is ripped apart from the impact. Gore hangs in tendrils in what is left of the Delorean.

You seriously didn’t think a flux capacitor exists, did you? Back to the start.

Oops...Return to Chapter 2