HARDWOOD BLOOD CH.3 - TELL THE 'TROTTERS TO HANG

BLOOD ON THE HARDWOOD CONCRETE CH.3 - TELL THE TROTTERS TO HANG

By Tomara Armstrong

“Just hang tight. I need to talk to the chief,” you tell Curly over the phone. 

“Yeah, well, you just missed him,” he says. “Said he had an appointment…”

“Appointment my ass,” you laugh as you look at your watch. “It’s Happy Hour at Manny’s Chicken & Waffles.”

Curly starts in on “nastiness” and “level of taste,” but you turn the phone over and set it on the counter. “Make it stop,” you eye the receptionist. She quickly flips it over, presses the red button, and returns it to you.

“Thanks, doll.” You wink before turning and exiting the premises.

A hop, skip, and a jump, and you’re standing in a parking lot full of black-and-whites. Inside Manny’s, every table is occupied by men (and the occasional manly woman) in uniform. Well, almost every table. Chief is plain clothes, but he sports the same copper belly as the rest of Manny’s.

He sees you through the plate glass. Rolling his eyes, he motions you in with a wave of his hand.

As you pull the heavy door open, the crowd looks up from their syrupy stacks and hot wings. A few grumble or make obscene noises on your behalf.

“Heya, chief! Your dick is lost again,” one meathead booms. The laughter follows.

“Shut it, McNally!” The chief yells.

You casually adjust your hat, flipping McNally the bird. He’s a little touchy—slams his beefy hands on the table and bolts to his feet, sending his chair flying into the patron several feet behind him.

His ugly buddies are on their feet too, trying to anchor the beast. He puts up little fight. You laugh, shoot him a wink, and make your way toward the chief in the booth in the back.

Sitting with his back in the corner, the chief has a view of the whole place. His napkin is tucked into the collar of his shirt and his hands and face are sticky with buffalo sauce. Your stomach turns at the sight of him—pieces of skin clinging to his bushy mustache and chin.

He slurps, sucking his fingers as you slide into the seat in front of him.

“Who else knows about this case?” you stare at him as he pops a wing into his mouth. “Jesus, chief. Slow it down.” 

He eyes you and plunges his right hand—black fingernails and all—into his gaping hole to retrieve the chicken bones. Tossing them onto the plate in front of him, he says, “Waaah fugh gobbly-gorbin, muurtha fraknar misen pashla.”

You stare at him, wide eyed. What the… “Come again, chief?”

He returns your stare and repeats himself, attempting to accent each incomprehensible word, splattering your face with Tobasco and god-knows-what.

You force the bile back down your throat, shaking our head. “Someone planted the flasher as a distraction,” you say, reaching for a napkin as he pops another wing in his mouth. “For crying out loud! Stop stuffing your face and talk to me.” You slam your fist onto the table. “I will ask you again… Who else knows about this case?”

The chief slams his fists on the table, his eyes blazing red. Time stands still, the pressure builds, and the last chicken wing explodes from his distorted face at record speed. Your gaping pie hole plays catcher’s mitt.

You gasp, trying to expel the urge to purge the content of your stomach in Manny’s fine establishment, lodging the wing in your wind pipe. You feel the chicken barbs splinter and dig in.

You panic and grab your throat, falling backward in your chair, but the chief is already on his feet preaching about disrespect to the room of Manny’s patrons. Your gurgles are buried in a sea of “Yes, Chief!” and “No Chief!”

On the sticky floor of Manny’s Chicken & Waffles, your life flashes before your eyes—the good and the bad. You’re ready to accept your fate, ready to head to that big house in the sky, but you want to find that last memory that makes it all worth it. 

To hell with it. 

You close your eyes and leave it to fate. That comical genius blesses you one last time with some weirdo’s junk.

Crap.


THE END.

Oops...Return to Chapter 3

HARDWOOD BLOOD CH.3 - NO COINCIDENCES

BLOOD ON THE HARDWOOD CONCRETE CH.3 - NO COINCIDENCES

By Ryan Hunter

You stare down at the door mouse between the man’s legs. It’s like a car wreck, terrible to look upon but impossible to look away.

“What now?” Curly asks.

His voice shatters your reverie like a sparrow flying into a plate glass window. “Get a picture,” you say to him, looking away before you can be ensnared again by the siren draw of tiny junk.

“You need something to look at later tonight?” Twiggy asks.

“That’s cute,” you say. “Just for that, you fellows get to take Wee Willy Winky’s bare ass down to the station.”

“That’s nice,” Sweetwater says, pulling a cell phone out of his pocket and snapping a picture. “What’s your number?” he asks.

“What the hell do you need that for?” you ask.

“So I can text you the picture.”

“I’ve got a rotary sitting on my office desk, can you text to that?”

“You know I can’t text to that,” Sweetwater says.

You reach out and pluck the phone out of his hands. “In that case, I’m just going to have to hold onto this for a while.”

You walk down the alley away from the ‘Trotters. Sweetwater yells after you, “Man, you better not be using up my minutes. Don’t think I won’t be checking that bill.”

Without turning you offer him a one-finger salute as you tuck your heater back into its holster under your coat.

“And what are you going to be doing while we’re playing delivery boys?” Curly asks.

“What I do best,” you yell back to him as you turn out of the alley.

As you head back to the scene of the crime, you pull the brim of your fedora down low on your forehead, stuff your hands deep into the pockets of your overcoat and cast your eyes down to the sidewalk. The last thing you want is to be noticed snooping around the body.

Of course, with the circus of reporters, police and rubber-neckers milling around, you probably wouldn’t be noticed if you stripped bare and ran around the block jumping up and down. Actually, you think, that might be the only thing that would distract people from the excitement of a poor woman robbed of her life.

Still, you keep your eyes fixed on the ground, watching the litter dance around your feet. It only takes you a moment to realize there’s uniformity to most of the litter. White 1 X 3 cards have been sprinkled over the sidewalk like confetti after a parade.

You scoop one of the cards off the ground and examine it. It’s a business card for a place called Different Happyness. You arch an eyebrow at the Y in happiness and wonder if it was intentional.

The card is clean and smooth; it obviously hasn’t sat outside under heavy foot traffic for long. 

You tap the card absently against your palm, thinking over the events of the last few moments. A woman was killed scant feet from where you were sitting at dinner, most likely by the very person you’d just been hired to find. Then, when you went out to investigate, you were distracted by a small-penised flasher. It is possible that these are nothing more than a series of coincidences, but you’ve never been fond of coincidences.

You’re sure there’s something going on, and you think the road to answers just might begin with Different Happyness.

You turn your back on Gino’s, promising to never darken their doorstep again. It’s the same promise you made last night and the night before and every other night for the past five years, and it will likely be the promise you make tomorrow.

The lobby of Different Happyness is furnished nicely with a blend of wicker and watercolor. Musak pours out of speakers mounted in the ceiling and a woman sits alone behind a desk on the far side of the small room.

She looks up from her Vanity Fair as you enter. “Can I help you?” she asks.

“I hope,” you say, crossing to her while pulling Sweetwater’s phone from your pocket. You glance at it, expecting buttons, but all you see is a screen. You never had much to do with these contraptions, but you’d assumed there’d be buttons. You hold the phone out to the desk clerk. “You know how to work one of these?”

“Um,” the woman says, taking it from you and examining it. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I have one like it.”

“Great, pull up the pictures, would you?” you say.

The woman pokes the screen a couple of times and, through some magical incantation or other, brings a picture up on the screen. It is not one you were expecting.

“Did you want this picture of the naked African American man hanging from a trapeze with one, two, three…six equally naked women?” the woman asks, her expression a blank.

“No, that’s not the picture I wanted at all,” you say, turning your head to look at the picture of Sweetwater and his harem from a different angle. 

The woman swipes her finger across the screen and another picture appears. “Perhaps you wanted this one of the same African American man with the same lack of clothing jumping through a ring of fire with what appears to be eight other women.”

“Nope, not that one either.”

She pulls up another picture and says, “What about the same man, same naked, what appears to be a baker’s dozen naked woman and a tiger?”

“Keep going,” you say, sighing and wondering what else Sweetwater has been keeping from you.

She continues, pulling up picture after picture of Sweetwater and his erotic, circus-themed orgies, each picture more disturbing than the last until, at last, she stops. “Oh my,” she says as she looks at the picture Sweetwater took of Wee Willy. For the first time her face shows emotion. “That’s Paul.”

“Paul?”

“Paul Nordic.”

“Paul No-Dick?” you say.

“Nordic,” she corrects. “But I suppose that would be appropriate.”

“How do you know him?” you ask.

“He works here.”

“And what exactly do you do here?” you ask, spying a jar of lollipops and grabbing one.

“We are an adult entertainment business specializing in… unique desires.” She nods to the picture on the phone in her hand. “Paul was a flasher. People paid him to run up to someone on the street, flash them, and then run away. He was very popular because, well… his presentation was memorable.”

“Yeah, I guess it would be hard to forget getting flashed by a Ken doll.”

The girl giggles behind her hand.

“So he was on assignment tonight?”

“Oh gosh, he must have been. Paul never moonlighted.” She giggles again and says, “No pun intended.”

“Mm hmm,” you say, not paying much attention to the conversation. If Paul was hired to be outside Gino’s, then he must have been there just to distract you. If he was there for you, somebody knows you’ve been put on the case. The only person who should know that, outside of the Trotters, is the Chief.

“Any chance you can get me the name of the guy who hired him?”

“Oh, I don’t know, I think that’s confidential,” she says.

“Look, your buddy could have been killed tonight,” you say.

“So he’s not dead?”

“Nah, he just took a Spalding to the place where he’s balding.” You wink at her at pop the sucker in your mouth. “But he could have, and I think the guy who hired him set him up.”

“Oh,” she says, flipping through a box presumably filled with records.

“How does somebody get involved in this line of work anyway?” you ask as she searches.

“Oh, different ways, some answer ads on the internet, some are referred to us by employs, some just come in off the street. I was sort of hoping you were coming in for a job; we have a request for someone with just your body type.”

You look skeptically down at your gut and then back at the girl. “Well, I’ve never been much for flashing,” you say.

“Oh, it’s not a request for a flasher. This job just needs someone in a chicken suit willing to Fetisherize.”

“What the hell is that?”

“Oh, it’s detailed in this manual,” she says, handing a booklet over the counter to you.

You take a moment to read it over, spitting your lollypop out halfway on the chance that it may have been involved in something like this. “Good God, why would anyone do that?”

“Flip the page.”

You do and you’re almost as shocked as you were when reading the Fetisherize description. “Five thousand bucks for one night?” you say.

“For one hour. If they want you longer, they have to pay extra.”

“Hmmm,” you say, flipping back to the description and reading it over again with a slightly broader mind.

The phone rings in the girl’s hand just as she pulls the name of Paul’s client out of her records box. She presses a green box on the screen and hands it over to you.

“Hello,” you say, hoping this thing works like the phones you can actually operate.

“Hey man,” Curly starts to say. 

Sweetwater yells in the background, “You know this is costing me minutes, make it quick.”

“Okay, shut up,” Curly says, obviously not to you. “We got naked-guy booked, what—”

Again Curly is cut off when Sweetwater yells, “And tell him not to be looking through my pictures. I’ve got… personal stuff in there.”

You’re not kidding, you think.

“All right, don’t look at his pictures,” Curly says to you. “Now, what do you want us to do next?”

Do you...

A. Tell the ‘Trotters to hang out at the station because you’re heading over to confront the chief about who else knew you were on the case?

B. Tell the ‘Trotters to meet you at the address of the guy who hired Paul so you can sweat some answers out of him?

C. Say, “Screw the case,” send the ‘Trotters home, and take the lucrative Chicken Suit/Fetisherize job?

WELCOME TO HELLYWOOD CH.5 - DANCE OFF!

WELCOME TO HELLYWOOD CH.5 - DANCE OFF!

By CM Holst

Usher grabs your skinny adolescent arm and pulls you away from the screaming gaggle of girls approaching. You wince like a girly-boy and follow him to a back alley behind the coffee shop. A homeless man curled beneath a blanket shifts and chuckles while keeping a steady eye on you as you walk by in your stupid skinny jeans, and your stupid sneakers meant for a twelve year-old, and your stupid helmet hair.

“Where are you taking me?” you ask in your pubescent voice. Wondering if your testicles have descended, you take a peek down the front of your pants to make sure your junk is as it should be only to discover you have no junk at all. “What the fuck, Skin! Usher! Whoever the hell you are…what’s the meaning of this?” You point to your pelvic region.

He laughs. “I made you exactly in that little shit’s image.”

“What?” You take a step back, confused. “Are you telling me the real…” you swallow hard. You can’t bring yourself to say his name. “He doesn’t have anything? At all?”

“That’s right. Come on. This way.”

Usher walks up a flight of stairs and unlocks a door while you wait on the landing.

“What is it?” you ask, noticing the frightened look on Usher’s face. “What’s wrong?”

You slowly turn around and find yourself staring down the barrel of a gun being held by the homeless man you just passed.

“Get that thing out of my face, old man.” You swat at the cold steel and the homeless dude laughs, smiling a toothless grin.

“I wanna see you dance, boy,” he says, his voice deep and raspy.

“Go to hell,” you say.

“Uh, that’s probably not a good idea,” Usher finally pipes in.

“Fuck off! This is all your fault! If you didn’t make me look like this, we wouldn’t have this problem, now would we?”

The homeless man raises his gun and presses it hard against your forehead. “You don’t like the way you look, boy?”

You struggle to find your voice. “Not exactly. Why are you doing this?”

He laughs again. “I told you. I wanna see you dance.”

“Okay. Fine. I’ll fucking dance for you.” You snap your fingers and move your feet to a rhythm only you can hear.

“You suck, boy. Try harder!” The homeless man shouts.

Beads of sweat dot your brow as you shuffle your feet. “Maybe if I had some music,” you squeak.

“You’ll be hearin’ harps soon if you don’t start showin’ me some dancin’. Now move!”

You shuffle your feet faster and gravel crunches beneath your children’s size 5 shoes. Your heart pounds and your lungs struggle to pull in enough oxygen. “Usher,” you pant. “Usher, aren’t you going to help me?”

The homeless man watches with wide-eyed anticipation as your feet move faster, and faster still until they’re nothing but a blur.

“I don’t understand,” you beg. “Why are you doing this? What do you want?”

“It’s working,” the homeless man says, and laughs beneath his breath. “It’s working.”

“What’s working? What’s going on? I don’t understand. Jesus! God! I can’t stop dancing. Oh my God, I can’t stop dancing. Please, sir. Please. My feet. They’re…they’re burning!”

The smell of smoke wafts through the air and into your nostrils.

The homeless man’s shoulders bounce with laughter. “It’s working,” he yells at the top of his lungs. The old man stands up straight and tosses his dirt covered blanket to the ground. It’s Elvis.

Dark clouds cover the sky and between the peals of the old coot’s maniacal laughter, you hear a distant rumble of thunder.

“That’s it,” Elvis says. “Dance…dance…dance until you die!”

“Who the hell are you?” you demand as you gasp for air.

“You’re tellin’ me you don’t know how I am?” he asks. “What the fuck are parents teachin’ their kids these days if you don’t know who ELVIS-FUCKING-PRESLEY is?”

“I know who Elvis is you twit! I’m not who you think I am! Please, I don’t want to die,” you say as you gasp for air.

“Sucks to be you then, huh?”

“Nooooooo,” you cry out, but no one can hear your screams over the rolling thunder. The friction from your feet started a fire, and at once your entire body -- your young, fit, and junk-less body -- is engulfed in flames.

The End

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 5

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.11 HEADS WILL ROLL

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.11 - HEADS WILL ROLL

By Steven Novak

Scattered around you are the bodies of the Martians you’ve just dispatched, their normally gray fresh singed and burnt from the blasts of your laser pistol. The room smells like a barbeque. It smells like day old fried chicken.

It smells oddly delicious.

In ten seconds the Janitor King or the reinforcements for the corpses sprawled at your feet, or possibly both, will undoubtedly come rushing through the door. Your first thought is to use the light transporter that brought you here in the first place to get the hell out. It’s a perfectly reasonable plan. It makes complete sense. Plus it would be easy. It’s also the best chance you have for survival. It’s exactly the kind of plan you would have jumped at fifteen minutes ago.

Too bad this isn’t fifteen minutes ago.

Things have changed dramatically since the former “King” of Mars asked you to come with him and allowed you to log into his data cube. You aren’t the same person that woke up buried beneath Malloy’s underpants just twenty-four hours ago. You aren’t the same confused and fearful schmuck just trying to survive.

Sure, you still don’t fully understand what’s going on, but you think you might have the answers tucked safely into the pouch around your waist. You’re done running and you’re through being scared. If the bodies of the chicken-smelling Martian corpses at your feet prove anything at all, it’s that whoever is about to burst into the room should be scared of you, not the other way around.

Kneeling down, you snag a second pistol from one of the Martian corpses, and then a third from another. You grab a nearby rifle and toss it over your shoulder as well as a few percussion grenades, and a laser-knife – which you slide into the loop on your belt. After arming two of the still smoking pistols you point them at the still-closed door. Let them come and get you. Let them try. It’s about time you stopped searching for answers like an idiot and started trying to make some instead.

It’s time you grew a pair.

What comes next is mostly a blur. A group of Martian reinforcements blasts their way into the room and starts firing. Your body moves even before your mind has time to formulate anything remotely resembling a plan or a maneuver. This is muscle memory at its finest and most dangerous.

In no time at all the room has become a mass of laser beams, wild debris and billowing clouds of grayish black smoke. You’re sliding, and firing, and spinning, all while shooting holes in the chests of the attacking Martians at an astounding rate. One of the Martian guards manages to get close enough to take a swing at you with a four foot long laser-sword. You dodge the wild strike by dropping low and blast a hole in his stomach with one of your pistols.

Your other pistol takes off his head.

You’re moving too fast for the Martians to handle – your shots are too precise. Behind you something explodes. A severed Martian arm smacks you in the back of the head. A fiery torso slides across the bloody floor beside you, spinning like a top and spraying blood in every direction like a sprinkler. You ignore it.

As the Martians begin retreating into the hallway outside the room, you instinctively follow. They aren’t getting off that easily. No one is getting off so easily – not with you – not ever again.

Hoisting the corpse of one of your attackers into the air, you use the Martian’s body as a makeshift shield and continue to press forward. With your free hand you start firing into the crowd of reinforcements crammed into the tight quarters of the hallway. Though it’s difficult to get an accurate count through the smoke and the noise and the explosions, you think there might be thirty of them.

A Martin head explodes like a balloon inflated just a bit too far. A chunk of Martian brain bounces off the side of your ear like a NERF ball soaked in cottage cheese.

Better make that twenty-nine.

It takes you less than ten minutes to dispatch the remaining twenty-nine Martian guards, and the fifteen or so that swarm in afterward. A half an hour after that and you find yourself holed up in a modestly sized room in one of the Martian slums on the outskirts of the colony. You rented the place under a false name and used some Zircons you stole from the uniform of one of the corpses during your firefight.

You’re nibbling on some dinner you purchased on the way over – it's chicken. The gunfight left you very hungry for chicken. Go figure.

With a bit of creative tinkering you manage to connect the data cube the Janitor King gave you to the room’s rather crummy and remarkably simplistic Martian Television set built into the wall. The thing is so old it doesn’t even offer a brain interface – so old you’re surprised it even turned on. There’s absolutely no reason these two things should ever work in conjunction with one another, but making them do exactly that seems almost laughably simple to you all of a sudden.

You chuckle audibly; a lot of things seem simpler these days.

In no way prepared for the sudden jolt of information, the viewing screen of the ancient television begins to hum as the contents of the cube pop onto the monitor. The interface of cube and this antiquated bit of Martian technology isn’t likely to last long, and when the circuits are fried both contraptions will likely be useless.

You only need a few minutes though – five at the most – five measly minutes and you’ll have your answers.

Moments before the firefight you were smart enough to transfer the contents of the NOSSA surveillance cameras to the data cube. You need to finish watching the video you started earlier.

You chuckle to yourself again. In a weird way the Janitor King was right – turns out it does hold the answers to all your questions.

Quickly coding the transmission to the night in question you watch the screen carefully and notice the all too familiar forms of Saleen and Malloy entering quietly into your quarters back on Earth. With a wild static-buzz the camera shifts to the room's interior and follows the pair as they make their way past your couch, into the kitchen, and then through the door leading to your sleeping quarters.

The screen turns to static once again.

The television you’ve interfaced with is starting to overheat. The information is far too large for it to handle. It’s falling apart quicker than you imagined.

It won’t last much longer.

The static on the screen morphs into a twisty distorted image that stretches dramatically, leaving the feet of Saleen and Malloy on one end of the screen and their heads on the other.

With one hand you smack the side of the Television with your palm, “Come on you piece of junk. Hold together for a minute more!” Instantly the image clears.

You can hardly believe what you’re seeing.

Saleen and Malloy look to be standing alongside your bed. Not only that, but you’re standing right beside them – at least the you that’s dressed in black with dark make-up smeared across your face.

Even weirder than that is the fact that there seems to be another you lying sound asleep beneath the covers.

Like shaking a Frisbee loose from a tree, or the act of smacking that last bit of ketchup from the bottom of the jar, the bizarre image knocks loose the confused memories hidden previously within the folds of your brain. Immediately everything comes flooding back.

You’re not you.

You were never you.

Before the television screen overheats and fizzles out with a puff of smoke, you watch as Malloy fires a laser pistol at the you that’s snuggled under the covers with a stupid grin on your face. The blast opens a hole in your chest so large there’s barely a chest remaining when it’s over.

You were the secret weapon all along.

It all makes sense now. It’s all so clear. That’s why Big Boob Bob seemed to feel such a kinship with you. That’s why he was always winking at you and smiling knowingly. That’s why Malloy was so pissed and confused when you escaped. That’s why your memories have felt so disjointed, and uneven, and distant - they aren't even your memories.

You’re not an accountant. You were never an accountant.

They used the likeness of the accountant to get you into NOSSA and onto the transport to Mars.

Lifting your hand to your face you watch as it begins to morph into a shimmering, slimy blob of gelatinous goo. A moment later it transforms yet again into something more closely resembling a Martian hand, and then again into its original form.

You’re not you.

You’re nobody.

You’re a machine that’s gone haywire – an overheated television that’s burnt out.

The plan was for you to assassinate president Womack with the help of Bob, and then the pair of you – and a few others like you – would replace the Martian presidential cabinet and take over rule of the planet.

The plan failed.

They tried to use you. They tried to turn you into something you apparently had no interest in becoming.

No, you’re not you. You’re everybody. You’re anybody you want to be. And you’re going to make them pay.

Less than a week later, back on Earth, Tan’s body washes up in the sewage system underneath NOSSA headquarters. A day afterward Richardson’s laser blast-riddled corpse is discovered in stretched out in his bedroom. Only fourteen hours after that Saleen’s Amazonian-esque body is found stuffed into her modest locker in the NOSSA training center. Quite a few bones were broken and rearranged in order to get her in there, and it takes a day and a half and a laser-cutter to get her out. Only a day afterward, the NOSSA headquarters are burned to the ground. An investigation brings to light the fact that the company was neck deep into illegal experiments with Mutagenic Cell Alteration – which in layman’s terms means you.

A month later Malloy’s body is discovered in seedy hotel down south. He knew you were after him and had been on the run for some time.

While staring down at the corpse the investigating officer pulls the bed sheets covering him away from his body and is taken aback for a minute by what he sees.

He calls over the first officer onto the scene, “Was he like this when you found him?”

“Yep, exactly.”

“What the hell happened to his junk?”

“Dunno…guess someone cut it off.”

THE END.

RETURN TO CHAPTER 1

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.4 MAKE UP AN EXCUSE TO USE THE BATHROOM

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.4 - MAKE UP AN EXCUSE TO GO TO THE BATHROOM

By MJ Heiser

Looking into Malloy's face again was not something you wanted to do right now. Despite the fact that this time he would be clothed (and you would therefore be saved the sight of his naked nastiness), there's little doubt he will recognize you, and having both him and Saleen the Overwhelming Amazon united against you wasn't a pleasant thought.

"I -- I have to go," you stammer. You clap your hands over your stomach and work hard at making your face turn green and queasy.

"What?" Saleen asks.

You don't give her even a second to object. The security system beeps, giving Malloy clearance to enter Saleen's quarters. You scramble in your best impression of a diarrhea-addled duck walk towards the bathroom. You let the door whisper shut behind you, and let out the breath that had been growing stale in your lungs.

From the main chamber of the living quarters, you hear Malloy's entrance.

"Saleen."

"Malloy."

"I thought I heard another voice."

"Er . . .yes. In the bathroom."

"Ah."

"Is everything ready?"

"Of course. Our spies are set."

"Their disguises and credentials are immaculate."

"A little self-praise, Saleen?"

"Perhaps."

You realize you've put yourself in the unique position to get to the bottom of this mystery. You almost wish you could see them as they talked and conspired about offing someone important.

"It's deserved, I suppose. So, what about the person in your bathroom?"

Uh oh.

"I checked the security clearance. There was no native error."

"Did you check your own intuition?"

"What are you implying, Malloy?"

"Saleen, my trip to the infirmary was due to sabotage. I have a General Alert issued for the person responsible."

Saleen doesn't sound impressed. "Unless you waited until five minutes ago to issue the General Alert, the security clearance would have caught it."

Malloy's voice takes on the measured tones of someone speaking to a mental deficient. "I. Was. In. The. Infirmary."

Damn it.

Several seconds tick by in pure silence, and once again, you forget to breathe. You wonder what's going on out there. Are they typing communications into their wrist sets? Are they creeping up on the door to the bathroom, laser pistols drawn? Or maybe -- please -- have they shrugged it off and decided they should just sit down and watch some 5D space tube?

"Hey in there," booms Malloy's voice from the other side of the bathroom door.

Nope, not watching space tube.

"Hey," you say, trying to bury your voice in a groan of defecatory effort.

"You've been in there a long time, friend," he growls. You can tell he's trying to be playful. The thought of Malloy being playful is as ludicrous as the thought of a slug being swift.

"Oh, yeah," you say, deciding to play this to the hilt. No telling what madness drives you to whip down your pants and sit on the can. "I'm sure it was the cafeteria grub today."

"I think you should open this door so I can, you know, check you out, make sure you're okay."

"No, no, I'll be fine -- you two should just go on." --With your devious plan for assassination.

"I don't think so. Either open the door or I'm going to blast it in."

"Wait, wait!" you stammer, only now realizing just how bad an idea it was to pull your pants down. You rise to your feet and try to pull them up, but your hands are trembling too badly to get a good grip.

"Three . . .two . . ."

"Hold on a sec!" you grunt.

"One!" Malloy crows triumphantly, and with a loud laser shriek, the mechanism keeping the bathroom door locked becomes simply inoperable. The door is wrenched open, and soon Malloy fills the space with his considerable -- but fortunately, clothed -- bulk.

He arches an eyebrow at you. You're standing in front of the toilet with your pants around your ankles. The security shirt Saleen had given you doesn't cover you anywhere near enough. "Well hello, sweetheart," he says, gazing fondly at the place south of your navel before bringing his gun to level with your face.

Your last thought is: Huh. I die with Malloy staring at MY junk.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 4

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.2 SEARCH THE MACHINE ROOM

RED PLANET STOWWAY CH.2 - SEARCH THE MACHINE ROOM FOR A WEAPON

By RaShelle Workman

You decide to head in the direction of the chugging noises.

Where there’s a machine there’s a weapon, right? you try to convince yourself.

There’s a big sign on the door from which the obnoxiously loud sounds are coming. It’s a depiction of a human inside a red circle with a big, red line going through it. Across the top, in bold, it reads: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

“Wouldn’t you know it, I just became authorized,” you tell the sign as you pull on the handle.

The door opens with a hiss, and smoky vapors leak into the hallway.

“Oh hell,” you say, quickly closing the door behind you. It’s dark and loud – so loud you think your head will split in two at any moment. Putting both hands over your ears, you try to keep it together.

“Aww,” you scream, frustrated. There’s no turning back now though. Malloy is surely only seconds behind you. Using both hands, you feel along the walls on either side of the door to search for a light switch.

“Bingo.” You flip it on. The room is large and lit with strange orange lights.

It sounds like a bunch of people are running. Even over the noise, you hear shouting. “Hurry. Go! Go! Go!”

A herd of elephants, you think, shaking your head.

Heading down the first aisle, you start looking for anything to use as a weapon. You need one. Fast!

Machines of all shapes and sizes are everywhere. You have no idea what any of them do. Being an accountant, the types of machines you use involve adding and subtracting, the occasional search of an online website or the press of a button

You run up and down aisle after aisle, searching between the machines. Above them. Underneath them.

Nothing.

You run down an aisle that has a lot of knobs and buttons against walls of computers on either side. Blues, greens and reds are lit up all over the consoles. You don‘t stop, even though you‘re starting to get a little light-headed. There is nothing here that‘ll be of use.

“Damn,” you think, turning left and left again, slamming into something. “What the –?”

Taking a step back so you can get your bearings, you realize you’ve run into some sort of robot. You’ve also noticed your head is heavy. The thing is typing away on a keyboard. It turns and looks at you. “No. Humans. Allowed. You. Are. Not. Authorized.” Its yellow eyes look at you and back at the computer screen. It’s still typing away.

“Hey R2, you wouldn’t happen to have a weapon I could borrow, would ya?” You can’t help letting out a giggle. What the crap?

The robot is about your height, maybe taller. It has a rectangle head and a round body. The neck, arms and legs look to be made out of metal pipes. The thing looks like something you could have built in junior high shop class. It also seems to be getting wider and thinner; taller and shorter. Suddenly there are fifty more of them just like it. You figure you must be hallucinating, but can’t seem to care.

Smacking it in the head, you say, “Hey Roboturd? A weapon—mind if I use your arm?” Wobbling, you reach out to grab it.

“You. Are. Unauthorized,” the robot says, facing you.

It grabs you under the arms and lifts you into the air. Feet dangling, you start laughing and stick your hands in the air. “Weeee,” you yell, unable to help yourself. Inside you‘re scared to death and wonder where it‘s taking you.

You hear a whoosh and some doors slide open. The robot drops you into a container with grates along the bottom. One of your legs falls through as well as some ashy looking substance.

The robot looks down at you, its yellow eyes glowing, and says, “As. My. Favorite. Group. The. Coasters. Like. To. Sing: Take Out. The. Papers. And. The. Trash.”

It waves and there’s a whoosh as a set of big metal doors closes above you.

You wave back and chuckle because you can’t help it. Whatever was or wasn’t in the air has affected your brain beyond your control. Even Malloy and his nasty junk seem kinda funny right now. You realize Malloy must have set off an alarm. Those who worked in the machine room left so that they could put something in the air to cause your hallucinations. You can’t help but wonder what or who picked you up and carried you over to the container. Maybe Malloy in a space suit? You’ll never know because an extreme heat starts to rise. You look down. Massive flames are seconds away from incinerating you.

Before screaming, you think, Yackety yak, don’t talk back.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 2

RED PLANET STOWAWAY - CH.2 BETWEEN A CRAP AND A LOUD PLACE

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CHAPTER 2: BETWEEN A CRAP AND A LOUD PLACE

By MJ Heiser

Something about Malloy’s dangling bits fills you with rage. This is no way to live, you think to yourself as a red-hot surge of determination swells through you. I will not be victimized by this naked, grey-fuzz-covered ape.

These thoughts take next to no time to go through your head, but even so, it was time you really didn’t have. You’re past the decision point. You stagger over the soiled, filth-smeared underpants on the floor and heave your shoulder against the locker door.

Clang.

Oh, crap, you think to yourself.

“What the –“

You curse the throbbing mass of pain on your head and use the brain that surely still operates beneath it to locate the lock mechanism for the locker. You lift it, the door opens, and you stagger out into the relative brightness of the hallway-sized room beyond.

You don’t get much of a chance to appreciate your freedom from Malloy’s locker. Your windpipe is cinched shut, and you’re hoisted roughly into the air.

“Urk,” you say, with less dignity than you were hoping.

Through the pain in your head and the steadily tightening tube of your awareness, you see Malloy scrutinizing you. The bright red of his face is alarming in contrast to the white nakedness of the rest of him. His eyes narrow. You’re pretty sure of this. You don’t want to think yet that it’s only your consciousness narrowing.

“You,” he breathes. Spittle lands on your cheek.

“Hack,” you reply in a choking gasp. You want to flail. You want to do the thing that kids do, which is sag, make themselves extraordinarily heavy, and slip out of their parents’ grasp. You can barely move.

“What were you doing in my locker?”

You flop your head to the other side, hoping for some relief on your windpipe. No dice. Malloy apparently did really well in the Chokehold classes at NOSSA Academy.

“Answer me, maggot!” he barks.

If you had the energy and the breath to do so, you would roll your eyes at him, sigh, then say, “Uh, hello? I can’t breathe, and therefore can’t answer, duh!” You come as close as you can and roll your eyes up to the whites.

You’re dropped. You take a great gasp of air, and it burns in your lungs. You spend a couple of seconds curled on your side, whooping air into your body and trying to come up with some creative way to get out of this.

You make the mistake of looking up. You are now gazing directly into the underside of Malloy’s underparts. You almost gag.

“Maggot, you owe me an explanation,” Malloy starts –

But again his junk has inflamed you with rage. You don’t have to lay here and take this. He wants an explanation you can’t give him. Above and beyond all of that, you’re being forced to confront the sight of the most unattractive genitals in the human species.

You strike out with your booted feet and feel the satisfying impact – like kicking a rolled up pair of tube socks. You hear Malloy suck in a huge breath. You’re reasonably certain you know what happens next, and there’s no real need to stick around to verify your assumption. You’re on your feet and moving fast, slipping out of the narrow locker rooms before Malloy can regain his composure.

You emerge into a long, narrow corridor, lit above and below by glowing fluorescent lamps in the ceiling and floor. You don’t get anything as easy as signs pointing the way. All you get are sounds and smells. To the right is the smell of hot grease, as well as the source of that chugging machinery noise that drowned out most of the conversation you heard from the locker. To the left is the unmistakable stench of human waste – sewage processing, most likely. About twenty feet down the right corridor you spy a metal-rung ladder heading up into parts unknown.

Malloy’s voice bellows behind you. If he hasn’t figured out yet that you overheard some very delicate conversation between him and Richardson, he will soon.

You have to make your choice.

A. Search the rust bucket's machine room for a weapon?

B. Dig around in the giant crapper for a miracle?

C. Take the ladder to nowhere, counting on Malloy being too fat to climb it?