One of the turtleneck men rabbit-punched Chester, dropping him like a sack of laundry. My friend lay there unmoving, eyes rolled back in his head.
A gasp of protest shot out of me. “You’re doing this just for a comic book?”
“Prince Robozz #1 is not just a comic book,” Karleen Mopps growled. “It’s a blueprint for invasion! Behold!”
As ordered, I beheld. In one swift, bizarre motion, the old woman flung back her robe and let it swoosh to the floor. I staggered backwards into a corner, unable to process what I was staring at. Mopps’s long, lithe body was composed entirely of gleaming metal, contained in nothing but a red and black bikini and a pair of knee-high red boots. I recognized the apparel. She then tossed away the white wig and, gripping her scalp, yanked off her face. I found myself gazing into the shimmering silver countenance of … Gear Girl!
She laughed at my stupor. “You know me now, don’t you? Secret identities can be such a nuisance, really, but they do have their benefits. Oh, and let me introduce my associates … Screw-loose … Sprocket … and Lugnuts.”
At each naming, the bearer pulled off his own human mask to reveal a face of metal.
Screw-loose, the chauffeur, gave me a little wave of his fingers. “We’re pleased to menace you,” he quipped.
I raised my briefcase like a shield and began to stammer, “What …? How …? Why …?” Then through this maelstrom of confusion, something occurred to me: “Where’s Prince Robozz?”
Gear Girl sighed. “Listen. I’m only going to explain this once. Back in the early 1960s, when we first arrived here from Quarzzox, Robozz was as determined as the rest of us to conquer your planet. Our mission was to go undercover, learn your societal structures and methodology and, within a few decades, initiate the takeover. But Robozz grew soft. From early on, your lifestyle tainted him. The dancing, the dining, the films …”
“Especially romantic comedies,” Screw-loose put in.
“Yes, the bedroom farces.” Gear Girl shuddered. “Films with titles like Midnight Mischief Mambo and Three Heads on a Pillow. He’d watch them and get all … syrupy. He began to over-identify with humans. In time, he became …”
“A traitor!” said her three cohorts in unison.
Gear Girl nodded. “Exactly. Unbeknownst to the rest of us, Robozz—in his human identity—had contracted with Sci Fi Funnies to create a comic book detailing our plans. He felt that alerting the youth in this way would be the most effective method of warning humanity. He did all the writing and art himself.”
I tried to get this straight. “You mean Prince Robozz was really George Vanderpool?”
“Or vise versa,” said the metal maiden.
Sprocket scowled. “After we stumbled upon the comic at a newsstand, we knew we had to stop him.”
“Yes,” agreed Lugnuts. “We arranged for his sad little ‘boating accident.’”
Gear Girl continued. “After Robozz’s demise, Sci Fi Funnies kept the series going. But they turned our characters into noble protectors of the populace. We decided not to interfere with the publication. After all, whenever we did finally reveal ourselves, it would serve us well to be thought of as heroes—instead of the dominators that we really were. However, there still existed the problem of that first inflammatory issue. We bought up all the copies we could find and destroyed them.”
Screw-loose cackled mechanically. “Even broke into Sci Fi’s offices and torched their backstock.”
“But over the years, every once in a while, a copy of Prince Robozz #1 would pop up somewhere.” Gear Girl’s robotic red eyes stared into my own wide humanoid ones. “Then do you know what we’d do?”
“What?” I hated to ask.
She began to move toward my corner. “Why, we would lure the owner here and eliminate both him and his cherished collector’s item.”
Screw-loose emitted another of his nasty chuckles and also started toward me. “And we’d hunt down everyone they’d shown the comic to …”
Now, Sprocket moved forward: “Or even told the plot to …”
And Lugnuts: “And eliminate them, as well.”
Gear Girl’s face was now about three inches from my own. “We’re very efficient. As your whole pathetic race will quite soon learn.”
I screwed my eyes closed and a sound escaped from my lips that no one would describe as manly.
At that dire moment, I was greeted by a loud, familiar voice raised in extreme annoyance: “Yo, you frickin’ rustpot kettle heads! Look over here!”
When I dared open my eyes, I saw that all four robots had turned their backs on me and were now focused elsewhere. There in the middle of the room stood one Chester Prutzman, looking pissed as hell. Above his head he held high an unfathomable device comprised of metal rings, intricate circuitry, and glass tubes filled with a bright blue fluid.
He assumed an expression of childlike innocence. “Gee, this gizmo you have here looks all mega-tech and important and stuff. I happen to know it’s the core of your power. So I probably shouldn’t mess with it, right?” With that, he flung the device to the hard floor where it exploded like fireworks, shooting out a web of quivering bluish light beams in every direction.
The Nuts-n-Bolts Brigade unleashed a team shriek that all but pierced my eardrums. Although the light beams flashed across my body, they seemed to do me no harm. On the other hand, their effect on the robots was spectacular. Howling and jerking, the metallic foursome staggered around the room as if they were in the throws of a Sex Pistols revival. The streams of blue energy had turned them into raging marionettes no longer in control of their own limbs. What’s more, all the walls of machinery seemed to be likewise affected as the room filled with frenzied crackling, sputtering sparks, and clouds of thick black smoke.
“Make tracks, man!” Chester hollered, and I did.
We swung open the oak doors and began racing through the maze of rooms.
At one point, Chester halted before one of the display cases and tried to force open the lid. “Just let me grab a couple of those Plaid Stallions.”
“Forget it!” I shoved him forward. By now, a tide of angry flames was pursuing us, and the house itself seemed to be in the grip of a powerful seizure. We rushed onward and burst out through the front door. Luckily, the limo still sat in the driveway, keys in the ignition. With Chester at the wheel, we tore out of there just as the mansion went up in a fierce ball of fire.
We sped on for several minutes before I managed to find my voice, “How did you know shattering that contraption of theirs would short-circuit them?”
Chester shrugged. “Call it intuition. Plus, man, I was really ticked off. Urge to smash.”
“Oh.”
I suddenly noticed that I had retained my grip on the briefcase, despite all the insanity. Opening it now, I extracted Prince Robozz #1 and held it up before me. I could never again look at the Nuts-n-Boltsers without imagining myself the object of their laser-spear barbecue. And the image of the poor Prince, who had sacrificed himself for humankind, was equally hard to bear. With a great cathartic cry, I ripped the comic book into a dozen jagged pieces and threw them out the window.
Chester glanced over at me. “You’re hardcore, man.”
We drove into the descending darkness. Emotionally exhausted, I closed my eyes and eventually managed to doze off.
Sometime later, I let out a yelp and jumped in my seat. A reaction, no doubt, to the terrors I’d just lived through. Either that or my inner child had just kneed me in the marbles.
After that, I never saw Chester Prutzman again. In the days immediately following our escapade, he didn’t answer any of my calls. When I finally stopped by his apartment, the landlord informed me that my friend had abruptly left town, no forwarding address given. This was in the days before cell phones and the internet, so if you wanted to disappear into the ethers, it wasn’t hard to do. After some thought, I figured maybe it was for the best. In the wake of the harrowing madness I’d just experienced, I no longe
r desired to be part of the comic book universe. And Chester represented that universe more than anyone I knew. I sold my comic collection for a pittance and, as best I could, drove all thoughts of metallic space conquerors from my brain.
For a good number of years, I lived behind a comfortable wall of abject denial. Then, one evening in the late nineties, I was staying with some out-of-state friends when that wall abruptly collapsed. I’d been assigned the room of their son, presently off at college, and was settling in for the night when I noticed a stack of old comic books piled on a shelf. Like Ulysses drawn to the Sirens, I approached and examined them. Though several books were from the sixties, these, thankfully, didn’t include Prince Robozz and his Nuts-n-Bolts Brigade. I did, however, discover a single copy of The Heroic Baron Bazooka, starring that lesser luminary. This, of course, was the same Baron Bazooka who had guest-starred in one issue of Prince Robozz’s comic and whose merits Chester and I had once hotly debated. Out of old impulse—and despite my understandable aversion to the medium—I began reading the lead story. It only took me a few pages to come upon an unsettling piece of information.
Because I’d never followed the Baron’s exploits, I knew very little about him other than the fact that he could shoot bazooka blasts out of his palms (a fine enough power if you went in for that sort of thing). I never knew, for instance, his secret identity or what he looked like when not encased in his bulky, face-covering costume. Now here—on page three, panel four—the truth was revealed to me. Out of costume, Baron Bazooka lacked the standard buff physique of most superheroes. Instead, he proved to be a round, unathletic fellow with frizzy orange hair. And his secret identity? One Chester Ritzman! True, Ritzman was not exactly Prutzman, but damn close enough to make me nearly swallow my tongue. And the artist’s rendition of him looked unmistakably like my old comrade, down to the paunch and chin beard.
I flung the comic back on the shelf, killed the light, and leapt into bed. If I slept at all that night, it was sporadically at best. I woke with the bedsheets utterly drenched in sweat. I believe my hosts were forced to burn them.
If you’re wondering, did I ever attempt any follow-up research on the matter, the answer is a bellowing, thundering, deafening NO. Who or what Chester Prutzman was is something I have no desire—or stamina—to uncover. Let this written account of mine be the end of it … at least for me. If someone else is motivated to delve deeper into things, well, more power to them. As for myself, the only required answer to the above question is this: Chester Prutzman was my pal.
Oh, and he saved the world.
Michael Nethercott is the author of two mystery novels, The Séance Society and The Haunting Ballad (St. Martin’s Press). He is a winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, the Vermont Writers’ Award, the Vermont Playwrights Award, the Clauder Competition (Best State Play) and the Nor’easter Play Writing Competition. His writings have appeared in numerous periodicals and anthologies including Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Best Crime and Mystery Stories of the Year, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Abyss & Apex.
Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast
Eugie Foster
Each morning is a decision. Should I put on the brown mask or the blue? Should I be a tradesman or an assassin today?
Whatever the queen demands, of course, I am. But so often she ignores me, and I am left to figure out for myself who to be.
Dozens upon dozens of faces to choose from.
1. Marigold Is for Murder
The yellow mask draws me, the one made from the pelt of a mute animal with neither fangs nor claws—better for the workers to collect its skin. It can only glare at its keepers through the wires of its cage, and when the knives cut and the harvesters rip away its skin, no one is troubled by its screams.
I tie the tawny ribbons under my chin. The mask is so light, almost weightless. But when I inhale, a charnel stench redolent of outhouses, opened intestines, and dried blood floods my nose.
My wife’s mask is so pretty, pink flower lips and magenta eyelashes that flutter like feathers when she talks. But her body is pasty and soft, the flesh of her thighs mottled with black veins and puckered fat.
Still, I want her.
“Darling, I’m sorry,” I say. “They didn’t have the kind you wanted. I bought what they had. There’s Citrus Nectar, Iolite Bronze, and Creamy Illusion.”
“Might as well bring me pus in a jar,” she snaps. “Did you look on all the shelves?”
“N-no. But the shop girl said they were out.”
“The slut was probably hoarding it for herself. You know they all skim the stuff. Open the pots and scoop out a spoonful here, a dollop there. They use it themselves or stick it in tawdry urns to sell at those independent markets.”
“The shop girl looked honest enough.” Her mask had been carved onyx with a brush of gold at temples and chin. She had been slim, her flesh taut where my wife’s sagged, her skin flawless and golden. And she had moved with a delicate grace, totally unlike the lumbering woman before me.
“Looked honest?” My wife’s eyes roll in the sockets of her mask. “Like you could tell Queen’s Honey from shit.”
“My love, I know you’re disappointed, but won’t you try one of these other ones? For me?” I pull a jar of Iolite Bronze from the sack and unscrew the lid.
Although hostility bristles from her—her scent, her stance, the glare of fury from the eyeholes of her mask—I dip a finger into the solution. It’s true it doesn’t have the same consistency, and the perfume is more musk than honey, but the tingle is the same.
With my Iolite Bronzed finger, I reach for the cleft between her doughy thighs.
“Don’t touch me with that filth,” she snarls, backing away.
If only she weren’t so stubborn. I grease all the fingers of my hand with Iolite Bronze. The musk scent has roused me faster than Queen’s Honey.
“Get away!”
I grab for her sex, clutching at her with my slick fingers. I am so intent that I do not see the blade, glowing in her fist. As my fingertips slip into her, she plunges the weapon into my chest, and I go down.
Lying in a pool of my own blood, the scent of Iolite Bronze turning rank, I watch the blade rise and fall as she stabs me again and again.
Her mask is so pretty.
2. Blue Is for Maidens
The next morning, I linger over my selection, touching one beautiful face, then another. There is a vacant spot where the yellow mask used to be, but I have many more.
Finally, I choose one the color of sapphires. The brow is sewn from satin smooth as water. I twine the velveteen ribbons in my hair, and the tassels shush around my ears like whispered secrets.
“I don’t think I’ll ever marry,” I say. “Why should I?”
The girl beside me giggles, slender fingers over her mouth opening. Her mask is hewn from green wood hardened by three days of fire. Once carved and finished, the wood takes on a glass-like clarity, the tracery of sepia veins like a thick filigree of lace.
“Mark my words,” she says. “All the flirting you do will catch up to you one day. A man will steal your heart, and you’ll come running to me to help with the wedding.”
I laugh. “Not likely. The guys we know only think about Queen’s Honey and getting me alone. I’d just as soon marry a Mask Maker as any of those meatheads.”
“Eww, that’s twisted.” My girlfriend squeals and points. “Look! It’s the new shipment. Didn’t I tell you the delivery trucks come round this street first?”
We stand with our masks pressed against the shop window, ogling the display of vials.
“Exotica, White Wishes Under a Black Moon.” My friend rattles off the names printed in elegant fonts in the space beneath each sampler. “Metallic Mischief, Homage to a Manifesto—what do you suppose that one’s like?—Terracotta Talisman, and Dulcet Poison. I like the sound of that last one.”
“You would.”
“Oh, hus
h. Let’s go try them.”
“That store’s awfully posh. You think they’ll let us try without buying?”
“Of course they will. We’re customers, aren’t we? They won’t throw us out.”
“They might.”
My concerns fail to dampen her enthusiasm, and I let her tow me through the crystalline doors.
The mingled scents in the shop wash over us. My friend abandons me, rushing to join the jostling horde clustered around the new arrivals. While the mixture of emotive fumes makes my friend giddy and excited, they overwhelm me. I lean against a counter and take shallow breaths.
“You look lost.” The man’s mask is matte pewter, the metal coating so thin I can see the strokes from the artisan’s paintbrush. A flame design swirls across both cheeks in variegated shades of purple.
“I’m just waiting for my friend.” I gesture in the direction of the mob. There’s a glint of translucent green, all I can see of her.
“You’re not interested in trying this new batch?”
“Not really. I prefer the traditional distillations. I guess that makes me old-fashioned.”
The man leans to conspiratorial closeness. “But you purchased those three new ones yesterday. I tried to warn you about the Iolite Bronze. It’s not at all a proper substitute for Queen’s Honey.”
Memories of lust and violence fill me, musk and arousal, pain and blood. But they are wrong. I am someone else today. I shake my head.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I search for a hint of green glass or sepia lace. Where is she? “I’d never let someone use Iolite Bronze on me.”
“Didn’t you say it was a gift when I sold it to you?”
“What?”
“I was the shop girl in the onyx mask.”
I am shocked beyond words, beyond reaction. It is the biggest taboo in our society, so profane and obscene that it is not even in our law books. We do not discuss the events and encounters of our other masks. It is not done. What if people started blaming one face for what another did, merely because the same citizen wore both?
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