Overruled

by Hank Davis

  “See,” said Perri, “she’s making me feel better already.”

  Great, now it’s two against one. No, it’s the whole universe against me—the case of Everyone versus Scribbler. I watched Perri pet Susan. He rubbed her behind her ears and, with those affectionate strokes of his hand he made the dog-thing purr. Then I saw Susan extend her tail around Perri’s leg and hug it gently. She was green and gold striped: part dog, part cat, part lizard, and part new world monkey—four pets in one—with what looked like awful human dentures stolen from some nineteenth-century codger lodged in her slobbery mouth.

  “Okay, I think it’s time we get back to your story. Tell me what happened to you at the symposium shortly before you were arrested,” suggested Perri.

  “Okay,” I began as I eyed Susan who looked as sweet as can be at the moment, yet somehow also appeared as if she’d eat me if given a chance. “Here may be the thing that got me into trouble,” I explained. “At first all seemed quite well, then suddenly it wasn’t. Maybe I insulted someone.

  “At night, after all the panels, slideshows and demonstrations, we Sketchers often gather in the bar for what amounts to a mixer, a meet and greet, if you will. To get to know one another, we have a tradition of drawing each other. I’d had a few drinks by the time I met a real beauty. She was a delightful specimen by any standard; she had large opal eyes, long lashes on a perfectly symmetrical face and luscious lips that begged to be kissed. Do you know how rare it is to find an alien with lips? Sure, her ‘hair’ moved about her head like a jar full of earthworms but that only made her more exotic. Okay, I’m calling her ‘she,’ but who knows for sure. Whatever gender this creature was, she/it was stunning. We went to a booth to be alone.

  “Out came her charcoal stick and she did a most flattering drawing of me, using the back of her tentacle fingers to blend the dark medium in perfect nuanced gradations for the shadows of my face. The only weird thing about it was that after she did my portrait, she reached forward to touch my face and gingerly push my mouth open to look inside. Then she added a drawing of my skull that featured my small chin and prominent cheekbones next to the picture. Even though I was a bit bemused by the skull, I smiled when I looked at the drawing, and she smiled back. My heart skipped a happy beat or two. She was my first smiling alien. I didn’t know it was possible. I opened my sketchpad and drew her, pouring all of my passion for her onto the page, and I did one of the best portraits I’ve ever done. She took my hand and had me touch her face and look in her mouth. I got the message to copy her example, and I drew my best guess of the bone structure of her face. When I showed it to her, I saw her eyes widened, and she gave me another even broader smile. This looked like it’d be my lucky night. In return, she handed me what she’d drawn in her sketchbook. It was herself and me together in an embrace. I put my name on that drawing and my room number.

  “The next step in our courtship was critical. I had to draw myself naked, showing all my bits and pieces with exact anatomical precision at full sexual arousal. The way we draw each other may seem crude but, take it from me, it’s best to be one hundred percent up front (and behind too, if you know what I mean) before you engage in any alien copulation. My hand shook with anticipation as I gave my potential lover the drawing. It was well received with a sly smile and a flutter of her long lashes. Now she’d have to draw herself in the nude. That’s just how we Sketchers do it. I waited as she drew not one page, but two, then three, then, after a pause, a fourth. Leaning forward I could see from my oblique viewing angle that each page held four panels. Was she drawing a complete graphic novel? How much did I need to know about her body? I was beginning to get mighty nervous by the time she finished the sixth page of her storyboard when she handed it to me, with the beginning page out.

  “What I saw as I looked through the pages was an elegant and very personal—very graphic—comic of us making love. She wanted it all, and her body was beautifully curved and looked like it would be soft against my own. Although she didn’t have a true mammalian configuration, she was extremely feminine. Then I turned to the fifth page and saw her magnificent forked tail in action. I was clearly about to bed a red-hot sex devil. On the next page it was just one panel showing a moment of mutual orgasm in a most dramatic manner, a close-up of our contorted faces, her long purple tongue curled around my neck. I almost stopped there but then turned to the sixth page where I expected to see a postcoital cuddle. Instead, I saw my head being ripped off and my beauteous lover devouring my brain.

  “I looked up at her face, at her giant, perfect alien eyes, now filled with what was sexual craving and she widened her mouth well beyond any human width into a cannibalistic grin. My stomach churned, and I shook my head. She didn’t understand the gesture, so I drew myself with all my clothes on, one hand covering my crotch and my arm holding onto my head. She got the message. A hard pass.”

  “Did anything else happen at that gathering that you think stood out? Perhaps there’s a detail you didn’t tell me before that might help you?” asked Perri.

  “Nothing that I recall. I drank and drew until my head swam and my hand cramped. It was all the regular kind of visual ‘conversation’ between Sketchers. Then I went to bed. Oh wait, I forgot, earlier I had to go back to my room to get a new sketchbook, mine went missing. All was okay though, someone found it and returned to me before the end of the evening. They could tell the drawings inside belonged to a human, and I was the only one there. There’s a homing signal in the sketchpad too, in case I lose it, but I guess it didn’t work in that room. A lot of those places have signal dampeners.”

  “Hmm,” hummed Perri rubbing his chin area thoughtfully. “I need to take a look at those drawings. Do I have your permission to bring in some outside help?”

  “Yes, anything.”

  “It could be costly.”

  “Anything. Do you think my art can save me? I used it once before to exonerate myself when I was accused of drinking the last of my dad’s favorite beer. Once I showed my dad the drawing I’d done of him drinking it himself, with the five empties beside him, he laughed, and said something dismissive like, well, I’ll be damned—nothing approaching an apology. Funny how something like that can still bother you years later.”

  I handed him the three sketchpads I had there. “When the authorities came to my room to arrest me they confiscated my other sketchbooks, ‘took them into evidence’ they said. I know you erased your memory, but do you have any idea why you didn’t ask me about this before?”

  “No, I don’t know. I’m going over to the evidence room to take a look at what the guards have of yours. Susan can’t go there with me. You don’t mind if she hangs out with you for a while, do you?” he asked, but he was already out my cell door before I could protest. I looked over to Susan who seemed to smirk at me menacingly.

  I decided to talk to her, “What kind of lawyer leaves a dangerous wild animal alone with his client? Seems irresponsible, doesn’t it?” I said as I glanced around the cell for anything to defend myself. I pulled on my chair to see if I could get it loose, and use it to keep the vicious animal away from me, but it wouldn’t come free.

  Susan just sat perfectly still and watched my unproductive efforts. She followed my hand suspiciously as I reached for my sketchbook but settled down once I started drawing. As I drew her, I noticed Susan’s back paws seemed to be partly webbed. What seemed to be a soft nose was a beak-like snout. You always learn more by drawing something than just looking at it. The finished picture pleased me. On a lark, I said, “Hey, Susan, what do you think?” Then I held the drawing out for her to see.

  Instantly she was up on all fours and headed for me. I had nowhere to run. But her eyes, thank the gods, weren’t on me. She went right towards the drawing I held out. I felt a little like a matador waving a small red cape out for an enraged bull. Of course, Susan wasn’t a bull, yet she did have horns, and I wished to avoid them. She stopped right at the drawing, looked at it for a full nerve-racking minute, then
turned to me and quacked. Yes, quacked. Susan was part dog, part cat, part lizard, part monkey, and part duck, or so it seemed to me. The only animal I knew that had half those characteristics was a platypus, and they were long extinct. After this encounter we became friends. I got her to do other poses for me, and she loved the results of her portraits—finally, a favorable art critic.

  Perri returned carrying a purple spacesuit. He was dressed for court, wearing a white wig and goggles. Since there were no eyes behind those glasses, this was the height of superfluousness, some court affectation, like his headgear. “It’s time for you to appear before the judge—put this on. It will adjust to fit your frame perfectly.” He extended the suit to me.

  “Why? Are we going out into the vacuum of space?”

  “It’s required apparel, like my powdered wig. Tradition, what are you going to do? You can’t go against a custom many thousands of years old.” When I first saw Perri in the wig, I thought he was mocking Earthly barristers of well before my time, but he’d claimed that we humans had stolen the idea from the galactic court, not the other way around. Despite my doubts, I didn’t know enough about the issue to argue.

  I followed Perri’s instructions, removed my Dalmatian pajamas and pulled on the spacesuit. It felt more like a flimsy child’s costume, clearly unsuitable for actual space. Perri helped me put on the ridiculous fishbowl helmet. When he twisted it on, it made the schtook sound of an airtight closing seal. “This feels weird, I don’t think I want the helmet,” I said as I tried to remove it.

  “No, you can’t take it off,” said Perri sternly.

  “Why not?”

  “I meant it won’t come off. You can’t get it off unless the judge decrees it.”

  I felt panic rise in me. “Why, the fuck, is that?”

  “Remember when I said we fast-track injustice, pardon me, I mean justice, here. When you’re found guilty…I mean if you’re found guilty, you’ll be instantly gassed inside that suit.”

  “Gassed to death?”

  “Of course. Carbon monoxide or an inert gas, I believe,” said Perri matter-of-factly as if this was simply an issue of discussing the method used. “Then your body will be liquified, dehydrated and absorbed into that nice set of tanks on the back of the Obliteration Suit. It’s all very efficient. Impressive, right?”

  “Impressively deplorable. You’ve had me effectively dig my own grave, dress myself in a murder-me suit. By your instructions, I’ve sealed myself into a nightmarish garb of my instantaneous demise. You goddamn, guileful gearbox; I won’t let you kill me. No, strike that, I’m happy to die as long as I kill you first.” I screamed as I lunged at Perri.

  * * *

  I felt a breeze pushing against my clothes, and I sensed I was moving. When I looked around me it seemed I lay on a plate like an entree about to be served. Standing above me was Perri, the captain of this mini-flying saucer.

  “Sorry, Mr. Laudent Fridolupe Granger, I had to quiet you for a little while. You became unreasonably emotional. Come on, get up now, we’re about to appear before the judge,” said Perri.

  “Perri, is there any chance you could refer to me as Scribbler?” I asked.

  “Certainly not, that’s not your real name.”

  “Okay, whatever, let’s get this over with,” I said in defeat. Perri helped me up on my unsteady legs. We were on a kind of dais that moved through the hangar-sized courtroom well above the ground floor. The last time I rode on one of these I tried to jump off, but the dais just grabbed me none too gently by one of its extruding metal tentacles and yanked me back on. There was no escape, my doom awaited, the fast reflexes of this sinister technology assured it.

  Another saucer came up alongside us with Dr. Susan eagerly riding on it, her fur fluttering in the wind. As the edge of it touched ours, she ambled over to us. I was happy to see my striped friend, and I bent down to pet her, the way Perri had. With that her inner kitten came out and she purred for me. Having Dr. Susan with me was comforting. She was very much indeed an emotional support animal.

  As we flew along through the towering open courtroom, I noticed that the structure most resembled an intergalactic hub, as busy as a beehive. Daily trains, planes, airships and spaceships ferried defendants from all over the universe here for trial and then loaded them back on transport to prison or off to freedom, or dust into space—my likely fate. I saw a frenetic chaos of daises that zipped about with defendants that traveled to levitating benches with judges seated at them in what I’d call court cubicles, and there, people of all alien kinds were then mercilessly judged. Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, rang out gavel after gavel and it echoed through the cavernous concourse.

  Perri reached down and one of my sketchbooks popped up from inside the dais. He handed it to me after opening it to a page. “That’s the portrait you did, right?” he asked. I nodded as I looked at it. “That red dot, that wasn’t part of your drawing, was it?”

  “No,” I said and reached forward to touch the red area.

  “I didn’t think so,” said Perri, “it’s a deadly poison and meant to kill you on contact with your skin.” I jerked my hand back—who knew what protection my suit offered me? “That’s our defense. That poison is not easily attained and humans can’t handle it without dying in horrible pain, so why would you have it? Obviously, you were targeted too.”

  I closed the book and handed it back to Perri, happy to have it out of my hand. Perri seemed confident here, but he had been wrong all too often, I couldn’t get my hopes up.

  It became foggy as we entered an area meant for creatures needing extra moisture in the air around them. Then, there before me, was the same judge I’d had before, the bloated, slimy invertebrate who’d previously found me guilty. He was an angry mollusk-man whose people had slid out of the swamp, eating scum along the way, yet somehow the species had become sentient. Despair and dread consumed me. All I could think to do was hug Dr. Susan to me.

  “Stand up,” demanded Perri. I stood and faced the judge. He looked ridiculous in his headdress, a woven wool periwig. In a less series situation I might laugh at his odd attire.

  “Back again?” the judge asked theatrically. Having fun with a condemned man was his idea of entertainment. The rest of what he said had to be interpreted by Perri. “Jokes aside, why didn’t you take the deal?” Perri repeated in English for me. Then Perri explained my reasons for not taking the deal to the judge and later revealed his explanation to me.

  “Sorry,” said Perri, turning to me, “it seems the charge of conspiracy to commit murder has been upgraded to first-degree murder. The person you allegedly put a contract on to be assassinated has been murdered.”

  “I don’t see how that matters, I’m already about to be executed,” I countered.

  “Slight difference,” explained Perri, “for planning a murder you are executed. If the murder is carried out they add on twenty-five years of physical torture, then they kill you. The suit you have on will immediately start shocking you with jolts of electricity if we lose. That might sound like, uh, overkill, but our society has a preponderance of sadists, and we need to offer them employment commensurate with their talents. They’ll take over your torture once you’re delivered to prison.”

  My frail body surely would likely withstand only a minute of shock torture before it, so to speak, gave up the ghost, so I said, “Whatever.” For a second there I thought I saw an ounce of sympathy on Perri’s glossy face.

  “If the judge will allow, I’d like to enter into evidence the defendant’s sketchbook. It will illustrate his innocence without a shadow of a doubt.”

  Having heard this repeated to me in English, I perked up. Maybe he could save me. My heart now pounded so hard it rattled the ribs of my narrow chest.

  Perri pulled out the sketchbook I’d been drawing in while I was in my cell, not the one he’d shown me. What did he have in mind? He flipped it open to the page I’d put all my frustrated feelings into about the judge. Perri was about to show the ju
dge all the awful loathing I felt towards the slug of a man who’d found me guilty. My art depicted horrible, disgraceful, caricatures of the judge, the person I most faulted with my most dire circumstance.

  “No, Perri, NO! Don’t show him that.” I grabbed at Perri and begged, to no avail. At first, the judge just stared at the open pages Perri held out. Then the judge snatched the sketchbook out of Perri’s hands and flipped through the sketchbook. I knew my drawings started with me holding a giant saltshaker over the judge and showering him with the mollusk killing crystals. Next, my art showed the judge melting into sludge. In the final scene you saw me peeing on his partially melted form with only his awful periwig and black robe left behind, the peruke now stained more yellow than before. God help me, I’d had a few colored pencils with me, and I used them to add an ochre accent to what would lead to my inevitable extermination.

  I watched as the judge swelled, and swelled more. His face went purple. Then he squealed out an ear-piercing screech that made his fellow judges floating around the concourse snap their heads in our direction. His head then rocked up and down while he exclaimed something unintelligible. I cowered behind Perri, nearly peeing in my already clammy Costume de la Muerte.

  Perri turned to me, “He thinks that your drawings are funny. He’s laughing. Now that I’ve gotten him on our side, I’ll show him the main evidence that will exonerate you.”

  Everything was all going far too fast for me. I couldn’t believe it. Perri showed the judge drawing after drawing from my sketchbooks while they exchanged what to me was clickity-clackity gibberish.

  Then Perri turned towards me and removed the helmet from my head. It was just in time for me to see the gavel fall and to hear the judge say in perfect English, albeit a bit viscously “I FIND YOU INNOCENT OF ALL CHARGES.” Then, all of the pressure of the day drained from me, along with the blood from my head, and I fainted.