RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.5 ENJOY THE HILTON

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.5 - ENJOY YOUR STAY AT THE HILTON

By Nina Bau

You watch as Bob disappears into the men’s room. The temptation to run is strong, but you’re not sure where you’d run to. You don’t have any evidence and you don’t even know who the target is in Malloy’s plan. You decide to play along a little longer, and if you get to soak in one of the Cydonia Hilton’s massive massage tubs in the process, so be it.

Bob ambles out of the restroom and wordlessly heads towards the shuttle station.

“What about that drink?” you ask.

“We can order something at the hotel. Saleen will be expecting to hear that we’ve checked in, and you know how she is when she’s kept waiting.”

You nod, mustering up your best been-there, that-bitch-sure-is-crazy look.

The shuttle ride through the city is pretty uneventful. Bob drums his fingers against his leg, occasionally allowing them to morph into a taffy-like consistency and stick to his pants. No one but you seems to notice. The other passengers are busy drinking in the sleek buildings and seductive lights of downtown Cydonia, Mars’ largest city.

The lobby of the Cydonia Hilton looks like it was dipped in gold. A night’s stay in a place like this would cost you a month’s salary in zircons.

“Be right back,” Bob mumbles, and heads in the direction of the public restrooms.

This guy has a bladder like your 95-year-old grandfather.

Moments later, a buxom redhead sidles up to you and slips her arm around your waist. She’s wearing an emerald green slip dress and matching, impossibly high, heels. You’re confused, but going with the flow has kept you alive this long.

“Let’s go, love.”

She gently steers you in the direction of the registration desk. The young clerk behind the counter does a classic double-take at your new companion. You glance over your shoulder, looking for Bob. He’s still in the bathroom.

“Welcome to the Cydonia Hilton.”

“Reservation for the Blanks.”

The clerk types on a keyboard, consults the monitor and then he smiles.

“Ah, yes. The honeymoon suite. Top floor. Do you need assistance with your bags?”

“No,” the redhead purrs. “They’ll be arriving later. Show them up when they do.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The clerk slides your… spouse?… a room keycard.

“And please make sure we’re not disturbed otherwise.”

The redhead grabs the back of your neck and pulls you in for a long wet kiss.

The clerk gives you a salacious wink.

In the elevator, you ask, “Where’s Bob?”

The redhead morphs into Bob.

“Right here.”

Vomit gathers in the back of your throat.

Once in the suite, you can barely appreciate the plush carpet, fully-stocked bar, and dazzling view.

“Was that kiss necessary?!”

You wipe the back of your hand against your tongue.

“Yes,” Bob replies, grabbing a bottle of champagne from a bucket of ice and brushing aside rose petals to plop down on the king-size bed. “The devil is in the details, my friend.”

Bob gives you the once-over.

“You know, you sure don’t act like any assassin I’ve ever worked with.”

Oh, crap.

“Well, I just don’t like things sprung on me, is all. I’m a professional, you know. And that was all… very… unprofessional.”

“Uh huh. I’m wondering if maybe Saleen and Malloy made a mistake.”

You’re starting to take all of this doubt personally.

“Listen, I can get the job done! I’m going to assassinate the shit out of… um… him…”

“Her.”

Gulp.

“Right. I meant her… and then we’ll see who’s the mistake. I’m an assassin for God’s sake. Don’t question me!”

You’re raising your voice, but you don’t care. You start waving your arms around to let him know you mean business. Bob looks both suspicious and amused.

“Fine. I won’t question you…”

You relax. Acting like a crazy person worked. No one likes to fuck with a crazy person…

“… after you lay out the plan. I need to know you can handle this. My ass is on the line if you can’t.”

… except Bob. Apparently, Bob likes to poke crazy with a stick.

“If you insist, Bob!” You sneer, giving him a look that says you’re offended, but you’ll tolerate his little game.

“We don’t want this peace treaty signed. And I’m going to assassinate her to make it look as if the aliens’ supreme leader did it… and then… I’m… we’re….”

Before you can come up with any more, the door to the suite blasts open and half a dozen heavily armed men enter. The letters G.B.I. are in white reflective letters across their bulletproof vests. Quicker than you can say, “Oh shit,” one of the men aims a large black pistol at Bob and fires.

Bob stiffens and then goes limp, champagne bottle still gripped in his hand.

The agent that fired the shot speaks into his wrist.

“The shifter is down. I repeat, the shifter is down.”

“Don’t move!” Another G.B.I agent shouts at you, but it wasn’t necessary. Your hands have been frozen in the air from the moment they burst into the room.

The clerk from the front desk saunters into the room. He has a gold shield hanging from a chain around his neck.

“You’re a cop?”

Thank, God! You’re saved.

“Special Agent Tudeski, actually. And we heard everything, Blank. We’ve been waiting a long time to catch the elusive Shadow Assassin. Not quite what we expected though.”

You’re almost offended.

“Oh. No. There’s a mistake. I’m not an assassin!”

Tudeski reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small item that looks like a garage door opener and presses a button. Your own voice fills the room.

Listen, I can get the job done! I’m going to assassinate the shit out of… um… him…

We don’t want this peace treaty signed. And I’m going to assassinate her to make it look as if the aliens’ supreme leader did it… and then… I’m… we’re….

“I can explain!”

Reflexively, you reach for your identification, forgetting that you’re not carrying any. The agents take this as a sign of aggression. They fire simultaneously.

Your body is filled with hot searing pain. Your bowels release. And then you die.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 5

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.5 JUST RUN!

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.5 - NO PLAN, JUST RUN!

By Steven Novak

You watch as Bob waddles his way through the bustling crowd of locals, tourists and foreign dignitaries flown in from Earth that have crowded the concourse of the Cydonia Mensae docking station. He comes to a stop at the entrance to the male restroom, and looks over his shoulder to see if anyone is watching him. Ducking behind a pylon, his body molds and twists itself, transforming into something more resembling a lump of shiny, partially transparent clay. A moment later the newly formed blob of sparkly goo morphs itself yet again into a rather leggy blonde with a set of obscenely large breasts shoved into a top so skimpy it might as well not exist at all.

Big-Boob Bob chuckles into his hand and slides into the female restroom unnoticed.

You’d shudder at the grossness of the situation if you had the time – which you don’t.

There are bigger problems at hand than Bob’s pervert tendencies. You need to get as far away from Bob’s oversized chest balloons as you can. You need to tell someone about Malloy, and Saleen, and Richardson and whatever it is they all have planned. You need to warn someone – anyone – of what’s going on.

You may not know the details, but you know someone if going to die and you can’t let that happen.

You need to get away.

You need to run.

You need to run right now.

Your feet don’t wait for your brain, and before you know it you’re barreling full speed through the crowd. You slam full force into an elderly couple doing a bit of window-shopping at a tiny store specializing in an even tinier array of useless Martian trinkets. The old woman’s face mashes against the glass with a fleshy-wet thud. Her teeth pop from her gums like they were shot from a cannon and shoot onto steel walkway below.

To no one in particular you scream out, “There’s going to be an assassination!”

Common sense and reason has long since become a thing of the past for you. People need to know what’s going to happen, and the best way you can think to tell them is to yell it at the top of your lungs.

So what if that doesn’t make sense? You aren’t thinking straight and you honestly don’t care.

You aren’t cut out for this sort of nonsense. That much is painfully obvious at this point. Perverts named Bob that can turn to silvery piles of goo . . . Malloy and his gray-haired dangly bits . . . it’s all become far too much for you to handle.

You’ve only been to Mars once in your life – just after the first Mars/Earth War – and it smells pretty much the same. You never forgot this smell. You’ve always hated it. It’s like an acidy burp after a belly filling night of Mexican food – like guacamole dipped in piss and left in the sun.

You hate this place and you want to go home.

After busting through a group of women and smacking one with your forearm, you knock over a crippled man in a hover chair then grab a ten-year-old boy by the collar of his shirt and hoist him into the air so violently his boots fall off.

Pulling him so close to your face that your spittle begins to puddle on his light brown flesh you scream into his flared nostrils, “SOMEONE’S GOING TO DIE KID! DO YOU HEAR ME? THERE’S GOING TO BE AN ASSASSINATION!”

Staring into your wild eyes and your sweat covered face the boy is instantly reduced to a jittering, sobbing mass.

Someone yells something at you from the left. Another person curses at you from the right. The cripple you knocked over whips his suitcase in your general direction. The father of the child you’re swinging like a sack of potatoes rushes in and tries to pry you loose from his son.

When that fails, he punches you in the face.

Within moments a mob of people has swarmed you, grabbing and clawing and kicking, all while screaming for someone to call the police. Through the wild mess of legs and torsos you spot leggy Bob and his massive jugs watching you from across the concourse and shaking his/her head in disbelief.

You try to point in his direction but no one is listening. Someone steps on your hand and snaps your finger like a stick of space jerky. The crowd is far more interested in beating on you, and they’re doing a mighty fine job of it to boot.

The next few hours are a blur really. Someone’s shoe connected with your temple and rattled your gray matter – after that everything seems hazy and disjointed. You can recall the police arriving – you think. You were cuffed – maybe.

Did Bob mash his boobs in your face and tell you to blow?

No, that couldn’t have happened.

There was a hover ship of some sort. Then you were scanned. At least you think it was a scan. It could have been any number of things really.

Eventually things begin at last to sharpen up and you find yourself lying face down on a steel bench. You’re dressed in a crunchy-stiff one-piece jumpsuit. A nagging pain has managed to settle the curve of your lower back, and getting yourself into an upright position again proves to be a difficult task. Across from you a set of four-inch thick laser bars are humming softly, sparking occasionally with blue-tinted twinges of electricity.

You’re in jail.

A rather beefy Martian emerges from the shadows to your left with a dangerously serious grin stretched across the leathery, gray toned contours of its face.

Reaching up with one of its boney, freakishly long fingers it begins unzipping the orange jumpsuit it’s stuffed into that’s clearly a good three sizes too small.

In a monotone voice it says only four words, “Take. Your. Clothes. Off.”

For a moment, your heart stops.

The alien then adds on two more, “Bend. Over.”

You’re in for an awfully long night.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 5

RED PLANET STOWAWAY - CH.2 TAKE THE LADDER TO NOWHERE

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.2 - TAKE THE LADDER TO NOWHERE

By R.A. HUNTER

Malloy’s voice booms from behind you, you can’t understand what he’s saying but that really isn’t your concern now. You consider the door to your right. With all of that noise there might be something heavy in there that you could use for a weapon but there are almost certainly grinding gears into which Malloy could easily chuck you if he so desired. You don’t even want to think about the room to your left.

You choose the ladder.

You close the distance in seconds jumping up onto the third rung of the ladder and not pausing to think before you begin your climb. You look up at the circular opening five rungs above you. You still can’t make out where it leads; all you can see is a sea of white.

You pop your head through the opening but don’t stop until the rest of you is through as well. At last you step off of the ladder and turn to look around. You discover you are in a large, round room painted a sterile white, unblemished saved for several cans strewn about the floor and surrounded by dots.

You walk carefully over to one of the dots and crouch to examine it. It appears to be a bean. Timidly, you reach out and pluck the dot from the floor. Indeed it is a bean and it is cool to the touch. It is a cool bean. You are surrounded by hundreds of cool beans.

Actually, you’d go as far as to say that they are cold beans. Very cold.

Well, you think to yourself, I suppose this goes a long way toward explaining the stench downstairs, but what’s the deal with all of these beans?

You step over to a can. No surprise, it once contained beans. You pick it up but drop it immediately when it is so cold that it burns you. It shatters to the floor.

“There you are,” Malloy’s voice growls from behind you.

You turn and see his head poking up through the opening. You can tell by his bare shoulders that he hasn’t bothered with a shirt and you wonder for a moment what the view is like from below.

“What’s up with the beans, Malloy?” you ask, forgetting for a moment that you are running for your life from this man.

“You didn’t expect us to just sit up here unprotected because the president wants to make nice with the grays, did ya?”

“So you froze a bunch of beans for protection?”

Malloy sneers. Good God, that must be what he looks like when he’s happy.

“The beans were just target practice,” he says. “But now we’ve got something much better.” Malloy offers one last sneer before turning and climbing back down the ladder.

For a long moment you are alone in the room. Suddenly, there is a whine of a hidden motor and a dozen doors open in the wall. Twelve men step into the room. They’re wearing helmets and goggles, which hide their identities, and are carrying white, bulbous rifles with blue streaks swirled on them.

The first man sneers so much like Malloy he could be his son. The thought of that man reproducing sends a chill down your spine.

“Do us a favor,” the sneering man says. “We’ve had nothing to shoot but bean cans. Run around a little, make it interesting.”

You stand dumbly. Your brain can’t process what your ears are hearing.

“Suit yourself,” he says with a shrug. He nods at the guy next to him who hoist his rifle to his shoulder and fires.

A beam -- the same color blue as the swipe on the rifle -- flies out of the barrel and hits you in the left arm. You scream as cold fire swallows up you left side. The force of the blast pushes you against the back wall. Colliding against it, the appendage you once used to write with and, on certain nights, used to relieve a little tension, shatters.

You gape at the cavity which was once your shoulder. Since the initial burning faded to numbness, there is no feeling. No physical feeling anyway. Inside you feel violated and betrayed -- but a surprisingly large part of you wants to yell, “That was awesome!”

Before you can do anything, though, another blasts freezes your leg. It shatters under your own weight, sending you careening through the ladder opening and crashing in a heap on the floor below.

“Good, I was hoping to get at least one in,” Mallow growls from somewhere to your right.

You turn your head and immediately wish you hadn’t when you discover the shirt isn’t the only piece of clothing Malloy decided not to bother with.

Your last thought as Malloy raises his own rifle is, Why does his junk have to be the last thing I ever see?

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 2

RED PLANET STOWAWAY - CH.1 HIDE UNDER MALLOY UNDERPANTS

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.1 - HIDE UNDER MALLOY'S UNDERPANTS

By JA Souders


You quickly bury yourself under the pile of gray-colored, nasty, smelly underpants and hold your breath. The sticky fabric crunches under your fingertips when you pull it over your head.

Each of the captain’s footfalls is in time to your heartbeat.

Please don’t come here. Please don’t come here, you beg, although you know it’s hopeless. Where else would he go to retrieve clothes?

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Your eyes water from the fumes drifting off the raunchy clothes, but you try not to move. If Malloy catches you now, it’s all over. Better to let the salty tears run down your cheeks than taste the rusty blood when he knocks every single one of your teeth out of your head for seeing him naked.

Malloy continues to grumble under his breath about “fucked up alliances” and “gray-skinned bastards whose only interest in camaraderie is eating our still beating hearts once they rip them from our chests.”

You wonder, vaguely, what the hell he’s talking about just as he wrenches open the door to the storage locker. Surprised by the abruptness of the move, you accidently gasp. The pile of clothes you are lying in tumbles out and across the captain’s bare feet.

Fortunately, the sticky substance on the grody briefs seems to have stuck the cloth to you and you remain concealed. You cover your mouth with your hands and pray he didn’t hear your slip.

Malloy’s mutterings fall silent. One. Two. Three heartbeats.

A tickle in your throat is causing you to swallow fast in an effort to control the cough brought on by inhaling the noxious gases pouring from his clothes.

What is this man doing with his clothes? Why do they reek so badly? Then you remember the sticky stuff and think it’s better if you don’t know.

Finally, Malloy mumbles about having the laundry bot maintenanced. He steps forward and his bare, gnarled foot, stinking so badly of moldy cheese that it overwhelms even the stench of clothes, collides with your stomach.

You try to control the wince, but it’s no good and the air whistles out of you as he kicks your stomach again, knocking the wind from you.

“Bloody gray-skinned bastards!” he yells and then slaps something along the side wall.

A siren blares. The call for General Quarters. You don’t have to look to know the red lights are flashing and crews all over the ship are scattering like ants to get to their battle stations. Not to mention that security is even now on their way to save the captain from the “enemy.” You.

Captain Malloy reaches up and pulls a white polycarbonate helmet—the kind they use for space walks--down from the top shelf of the locker as you struggle to sit up and explain. But even as you open your mouth, Malloy is swinging the hard plastic bubble at your head.

Stars explode in front of your eyes and you collapse into the toxic pile of clothes again. He continues to beat you until your vision hazes and you feel the floating sensation that is your consciousness as it leaves you.

Just as you black out, you see Malloy grinning down at you. “Thought you could get the best of me, didn’t ya? Going to report back to your Hive leaders what you heard here today? Going to let them know you saw me in all my glory?!”

You black out when he kicks you in the stomach again.

What feels like only seconds later, light floods over your body. You moan and wavering shadows swim into view. You can’t make out what these beings look like, but you can tell one is shorter than the other.

“It’s still alive. The captain said he’d killed it,” shadow one—the shorter of the two--says.

“Guess not. C’mon. We’ll have to finish the job,” the tall shadow says with a lisp. He sounds like a snake and you wonder if you were handed off to those “gray skinned bastards” the captain talked about. More clothes get peeled off your body and you moan as the light stabs into your eyes and a headache pounds behind them.

“Wait! That’s not an alien, that’s…” the tall shadow exclaims.

“Oh, shit! You’re right! What was the Cap’n thinking?”

“Does it matter? He thinks there was an alien here. It isn’t our job to prove him wrong. We need to get this…thing to the space lock like he said.”

“But it’s human?”

“Not according to the captain.”

You finally realize what’s happening and struggle to sit up, as the two shadows argue back and forth. When they see you sitting up right, they glance at each other. The smaller of the shadows takes your feet, while the other takes your head. They carry you down the hallway to a room with another smaller room at the end of it. The small room has a large circular door on one end with a window in it.

You see the red haze that signals that the red planet is circling below you.

You struggle harder, but it’s no use. They’re too strong. And they toss you into the tiny room. Then they leave, and the door locks behind them, echoing with finality.

You jump up as the warning lights and buzzers sound. They’re planning on tossing you into space without a suit!

You bang on the door, but the man standing at the window only smiles, waves, and points to the doors behind you as they slide open and pull you into airless vacuum of space.

Your last thought is how you can still smell the captain’s underpants.

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 1

RED PLANET STOWAWAY - CH.1 CONFRONT MALLOY NAKED

RED PLANET STOWAWAY CH.1 - CONFRONT MALLOY NAKED

By Ryan ONeil


Malloy reaches out with his leathery paw of a hand and pulls open the locker door. The rush of fresh air is like a small piece of heaven. You breathe deeply and then deftly leap from within the confines of the locker surprising Malloy. Although he is old and the forces of simulated Earth gravity pull at his aging body, his tense muscles ripple like slabs of cut gray marble.

Hoisting your shirt up over your head, you swing it in frantic circles like a drunken football fan cheering on your favorite team. The knot on your head pounds worse than the worst hangover headache you've ever experienced.

“Where’s the party, Captain?” You sing out in your best Elvis Presley impersonation.

“What the hell are you doing in there?” Malloy shouts as his nakedness steps sternly in your direction.

His grizzled, bulbous nose is now only a few uncomfortable inches from yours. His breath smells much like his soiled undergarments, and it's a smell that will haunt your dreams for the rest of your life, however long – or short – that may be.

“Huh, funny story Captain,” you say, and audibly gulp.

Your hands fumble first with your belt and then with your zipper until you feel your pants loosen. With your hands at your sides you hook your thumbs inside of your underwear and push everything way south of your hips. Stepping out of your clothes you use your left foot to flick the pile behind you. You slowly begin to shake your hips to the rhythm of a long forgotten song that echoes in the vast chasm of your pounding head. “Dance with me Captain. Dance with me.”

“Oh, we’re gonna dance, sweet thing.” He replies. “We’re gonna dance.”

The last thing that you remember seeing is Captain Malloy’s gray sledgehammer-like fist as it smashes solidly into the bridge of your nose. “Boom, boom, boom and out go the lights.” Malloy sings.

Everything in your world goes black.

There is no sight.

There is no sound.

But weird, you can still smell those soiled undergarments…

THE END

Oops...RETURN TO CHAPTER 1