by Spencer,Alan
After forty-four years of being alive, something was different tonight for Ralph. When he laid down to sleep after working the night shift at the gas station, he was relaxed. The tension in his body, the concern for being sleep deprived for the rest of his life, all vanished as if the problem had never existed.
Why was he resting so well?
His brain fired back the question, Who cares?
Ralph shut those heavy peepers and let that sense of comfort overtake him. Years of pent up fatigue were being released into the sheets and pillows. He was rolling, clutching onto pillows, and enjoying himself without question...until he opened his eyes.
The average person would've bolted from the room and screamed for help. But Ralph wasn't the average person. He hadn't been laid in, well, ever, and he was overweight and socially awkward. It wasn't his fault. It was the sleep deprivation. How could he be a fun person if he was always mentally and physically exhausted?
No matter now.
How Ralph squeezed the bed. Every ridge and every inch conformed to his body. Ralph caressed the pink ones, the brown ones, the yellow ones, and even the orange spray tanned ones. He stripped out of his clothing so he could feel the warm smoothness of flesh against his flesh. Every bud of areola, every jutting tip of nipple, Ralph relished.
Oh hell yes! More, I want fucking more titties! Pile 'em on, baby!
The bed, the sheets, and the pillows had magically become female breasts. He was easily laying on hundreds, if not thousands, of tits.
Glorious mounds.
Virtuous globes.
Fun bags galore.
Ralph kissed the breasts. He tasted the salts and marveled at their distinctive flavors. His hands were busy squeezing and testing the shapes and firmness of each one. He could swim in mammary glands. He was sinking down deeper into the bed grabbing, kissing, groping, and cheering until the tits covered him up from above. The breasts were getting bigger, heavier, and they were covering up his mouth and nose. Compacting him down, he couldn't breathe.
"Mmmmmmmph! Mmmmmmmmmph!"
Suffocating and unable to move an inch due to the sheer weight of the breasts, Ralph soon died. Near his feet, a label on the mattress read: The Amazing Sleep Forever Bed. May You Never Ever Wake Up.
Taco Fest
Fucking stupid fucking asshole. Boss can go lick a cow's ass. The jerk-off can go stick his dick in a pencil sharpener.
"Are the toilet's clean, son?"
"Not yet, Dad."
I'm going to kill that asshole. Dad's making me work all summer full-time, and my friends get to be out all the time and have fun. I'm fifteen. Fifteen. I shouldn't be working forty-hours a week. Does my dad think I want to inherit Taco Fest? The only thing I'm going to do is take a steaming hot dump on Taco Fest. Taco Fest, hah! More like Shit Fest.
"Clean the toilets, Miguel. Then come out and set up the all-you-can-eat salsa bar. We've got the lunch rush coming in forty-five minutes. I want it all done, quickly. When school's out, your ass is mine. I brought your ass into this world, and I can squeeze minimum wage out of it."
Minimum wage isn't all you can squeeze out of my ass, Dad. You sure look cute in that ten gallon hat you wear during happy hour. I'll take a dump in it next time you put it on. You'll smell like shit, just like the shit that comes out of everybody's greasy asses after eating Taco Fest. Who would've thought a self-serve, all-you-can-eat taco bar would make so much money? Money for you, Dad, sure, but for me, I've got dust in my pockets, you ass-jobber.
"Sure thing, Dad. I'm on it. Thank you for giving me a summer job."
I'd rather suck donkey dick. If it weren't for me being on work release for stealing that old bitch's car, I wouldn't take your stupid shit. It's either this or juvenile hall. I'm not taking group showers with anybody. Fuck that shit. Fuck all the ass-jobbers out there. I'm going to do my time and then I'm going to blow this Taco Fest out my ass. Just two more months and fuck this shit. I'm running the fuck away.
Miguel avoided his dad by grabbing the cleaning cart and heading to the bathrooms. He had to sanitize them up from yesterday. Miguel had never seen so much shit in his life. Spatters, and floaters, and diarrhea drips, goddamn, the whole scene was disgusting.
There was only one weapon against shit.
Bleach.
He imagined pouring Bleach straight down into each of the customer's fat, greasy, puckering buttholes. It should be a rule, Miguel thought, before stuffing their fat puffy faces at the taco bar. Get your bleach enemas and eat! He was so sick of smelling and seeing shit. But Bleach made it all better. Bleach was the solution. Bleach was everything.
Miguel poured two bottles of Bleach on the floor at once. Miguel didn't care. He'd mop it up quick, turn on the fans, open the windows, and really get this motherfucker sanitized.
While Miguel was dumping the bleach, he didn't see the words stamped on the product's label. Brand XXX Bleach Really Cuts Right Through It.
He had no chance to conceive the consequences of using the product. The tiles, the concrete beneath the tiles, the earth beneath the tiles, everything was melting and sizzling away. The foundation, the building, everything was pitched into the gaping hole. Deeper still, the bleach cut through the earth's crust, and the super chemical had no problem dissolving the earth's mantle. Everything in a mile radius of Taco Fest was sucked into the impossibly deep forming hole. Everybody and everything in that radius evaporated before touching down into the exposed molten hot core of the earth.
Today's taco buffet was cancelled.
Pace Maker
Max Sherman stared at the stitches in his chest. He had a pace maker put in days ago. He arrived home from the hospital this morning, and already, his chest was heating up. Dr. Proctor said he would be sore for awhile after the surgery, but this was a very unusual sort of pain. His wife, Mary, was calling for him in the other room to eat his breakfast.
But Max wouldn't be eating breakfast.
The pace maker in his chest was branded with the words: Pace Maker Will Take You Through Space and Time.
He couldn't make sense of things when everything around him became colors and motion. He was traveling at the speed of infinity. When everything leveled out, he was standing on a mound of dirt. Max only wore a bath towel around his midsection and his slippers.
Up above, he heard the stomping of a great creature.
The large teeth were about to bare down on him.
The teeth of a triceratops.
Max ran with one hand clutching onto his bath towel. "Oh lordy!"
The motion of lights and color returned right before the triceratops could take a bite out of him. Flashing lights, impossibly high speeds of wind, Max arrived in a dark place. A fire was crackling nearby. He was hunched around a set of cavemen. When Max appeared out of nowhere, the group of cavemen were alarmed. They were grunting and motioning with their hands to kill Max. He was already ducking and running when the group picked up their wooden clubs and pursued him.
"Good Goddamn!"
Max was almost out of the cave. He faced a great icy tundra. He trembled against the sheer ferocity of the cold. Would he choose freezing to death over being clubbed to death? While deciding, space and time opened up yet again, and he was traveling through insane axioms. Where would he end up next? His mind reeled and marveled at the brilliant show of colors bursting around him at the speed of light.
When the colors stopped, he feared what he would come up against next.
He feared for good reason.
The sky was gray. Snow flakes were falling from the sky. A strange, offensive smell of cinder and ash clung to the air. Max shivered. The air was frigid with winter's bite. He heard people barking orders. People were crying. Max was herded in a giant line of people. They looked like refugees from a city.
When Max saw the armed guards with Swastikas on their arms, he knew where he was going. Good thing space and time would open up again and take him away.
The line kept progressing.
&
nbsp; Max kept waiting.
When nothing, he rapped his fists against his chest.
"Come on, damn you. Work!"
It was broken.
The pacemaker was a useless hunk of plastic.
Before Max knew it, he was the next in line to burn.
Part 3
Fleet of Foot
Arnold landed on an awning one floor down from the window he jumped through to escape the hideous vein people. The uglies, he labeled them. Glass covered the surface of the roof, and he cut up his palms and arms. The pain injected new jolts of adrenaline into his system. He had little time to process the moment. The screams emanating from every street and building kept his eyes scanning everywhere for enemies. Odd explosions, the smell of fire, and the unheard of human reactions and agony split the sky. He was too busy dodging the enemy flying after him from the windows to completely take it all in.
Appendages flew out of the long row of windows above him. The visual of bodiless heads releasing war cries was harrowing. Hands propelled by unknown forces clenched their fists to inflict maximum pain. Legs were kicking at the air, swinging their feet to stomp Arnold's ass into the ground.
The anatomical wall was coming right for him.
Oh shit!
He headed for the emergency ladder nearby. He feared the body parts would assault him when the Channel 4 news chopper flew overhead. The limbs changed course, the body parts attacking the helicopter, bashing the outside of it, until it spun out and crashed into the building next door.
He didn't waste a second crawling down the rungs of the emergency ladder. Arnold's hands were trembling so hard. Sweat was stinging his eyes. He touched down into an alleyway. A bum was throwing back a pint of whiskey. When he finished the bottle, he smashed it against the wall. The man was going insane watching the things happening in the city. And Arnold was about to go insane watching the bum come undone like he was made of glass, and he'd just been shattered like the whiskey bottle.
Running in the other direction, he reached the mouth of the alley and escaped the gruesome sight of the mangled bum. A woman grabbed him by the shirt. She had blood staining her front.
"You've got to help me. I don't know how to stop it. It keeps happening, and I don't know why. All I did was eat candy!"
With that last statement, the woman's head was wrenched backwards. Her neck opened as if it was on a hinge and out popped a purple spleen. He ducked to avoid being smacked in the face with the organ.
The woman's head snapped back into place.
"Nobody can save me! The apocalypse is here! Repent your sins!"
She had been turned into a human Pez dispenser.
The woman was overwrought with horror. She ran away, screaming, until her neck bones made that distinct cricking sound, and out came her heart. When the heart left her body, she collapsed dead onto the street.
Arnold was on the main drag of the street. A riot was unfolding. People were screaming and fighting things that shouldn't exist. The heinous naked men and women with the veins outside their bodies were stalking the streets as if ushering the victims to their deaths in an expedient fashion.
The uglies were on a killing spree.
The convenience store on the strip of businesses had its front glass window broken. Inside, a box refrigerator had come to life. Circuits trailed out its back and created a single thick arm. That arm had a male customer by the head. The refrigerator twisted off the man's head, then lifted him up by the legs . The freezer section opened, and the man's neck stump poured blood into the freezer as if the freezer were tipping back a bottle of soda.
The clerk inside was blasting a .45 pistol at the cigarette displays. The cigarettes were shooting out of their packages like darts. They stuck out the clerk's arms and chest. Pumping nicotine and additives into his system at insane levels, the clerk detonated. The smell of menthol and tobacco was pungent when mingled with the scent of scorched human flesh.
The uglies were trying to close in on Arnold. Only one option remained. It was by chance he saw the two six packs of beer and that rubber stamp inked on the side.
Cans Go Boom.
"All right, you sons-of-fucking bitches. It's time to get a taste of your own twisted medicine."
He removed two cans from the six-pack ring and started shaking them up.
Come a little closer, uglies.
I got a wicked brew coming your way.
Always fills you up, never lets you down, motherfuckers!
Arnold tossed up the cans in both directions. When the cans struck the pavement and burst open, he imagined enough TNT to demolish a modest apartment building exploding. A rage of flames engulfed the ugly henchmen. Black smoke obscured the area. He couldn't tell if they were dead or slowed down, and he didn't hang around to find out.
He grabbed another six pack in case more of the henchmen showed up. He kept moving to escape the busier section of the city. A metro bus was crashing through cars down the street. Inside, the patrons were cooking as if they were inside of an incinerator. Black smoke was pouring out a rusty chimney on top. Arnold was gagging on the acrid smell. Big words on the side of the bus read: BBQ'r Transport.
Things were changing in the city. Tony's Awesome Pizza was now Tony's Awesome Gonorrhea Pizza. Arnold did a double take at the disgusting ingredients covering the pizzas on the front display pictures.
What...the...fuck!
Before he could ingest the information, a four hundred pound man burst through the eatery's display window and tried to tackle him. He was covered in melting cheese, pepperoni, and a nasty smeared blueberry substance that could only be...gonorrhea.
Arnold shook up a can and tossed it right at the monstrosity. "Stay away from me you deep dish walking heap of bullshit!"
He dove behind a crashed taxi cab once the can's fury was released. It was a good thing Arnold did. The man's flesh and guts and gonorrhea cheese could melt you like acid, Arnold learned, when he saw a meter maid's body be reduced down to the skeleton in seconds when she was pelted with the man's steaming remains.
He didn't stick around to count the pieces of the slain.
Run, you asshole!
The Java Station nearby was busy with odd flickerings of wicked bright blue light. The patrons inside were slumped in their chairs unmoving and seemingly lifeless, many still clutching onto their coffee cups. Lightening bolts kept bursting out of their eyes and mouths in strobe-like pulsations.
Lightening caffeine, Arnold thought. Jesus.
What is happening to everyone?
Arnold about threw up when he saw a man and woman outside a fast food eatery. The man had cut off his own hand (how he did it, Arnold could only imagine), and it was spurting out ketchup.
"I bleed ketchup, man," the stranger said in a delirious state. The man was outright impressed with his body's ability to bleed the red condiment. "I bleed ket-chup. Man. Wow. Du-de."
Arnold was flung from one horrendous vision to the next. Cars on the streets were driving on their own. Passengers were pounding their fists against the glass as they were taken somewhere against their will. He would later find out what was happening to them.
Street lights were blasting red, yellow, and green laser beams. If one of the colors touched you, Arnold gathered, it gave you rabies. Foamy mouthed, jagged toothed versions of humans were rampaging the streets and attacking innocent people.
He threw beer cans at the rabid people and watched bodies erupt into high-speed pulp. What concerned him was the black figure in that cape. The mysterious figure was looking down from one of the towering buildings observing the show. Several henchmen were alongside him, enjoying the events ringside.
Who was that asshole in the cape? He appeared at the police station and made his declaration of terror. He was determined to find out who he was exactly, and to stop the war he was waging, but first, he wasn't far away from someone who could help him. He was good friend's with this man. Perhaps together they could take on this threat together. He had to rea
ch the edge of town to get that help, first.
He gripped one can-grenade in each hand.
That's all that remained after taking out the pack of rabid killers.
His destination matched the direction the large number of vehicles were driving in. He was moving outside the main drag of downtown. Arnold made it six blocks at running speed, even though his left foot was killing him, and he wasn't in great physical shape.
He was now on the edge of a residential area.
The cars were backed up on the street for miles. The vehicles were headed to Cool Wash, a drive-thru car wash. The car wash had changed inside. Assembly lines of sharp blades, pressurized guns, and mechanical arms churned out vehicles with their drivers incorporated into the cars. Leather interior was now flesh-interior. Human rib bones were fashioned into hub cap designs. Side mirrors were human heads with their mouths open. Hands were car door knobs. Human arms became wiper blades.
Arnold couldn't take anymore. He shook up his last two cans and hurled them at the car wash. Arnold fled, feeling the heat and the concussion of the twin blasts. When he took a glance backwards, the car wash was a smoldering pile of metal.
There wasn't time to mourn those who'd died.
He fled towards American Pawn and prayed his friend was inside.
Mac and Sue
Arnold banged against the front door of American Pawn. The iron barred barrier would be impossible to break through with just two hands. They would either let him in, or they would leave him out here to die. Mac Steede, the owner, had seen his fair share of attempted robberies. Mac didn't mess around when it came to security. That's why Arnold identified himself and kept begging to be let inside.
Mac's worried face appeared between the iron barred slits through the glass door.