The Place in Between

by Reverend Steven Rage

  Trudge and Drudge were designed by The Good Doctor to live and thrive on human semen. But since chimpanzees share all but 1.4% of a human’s DNA, Uncle Tugmunkee fed them most days. In a pinch, however, Bill will have to do.

  “Get over here, dang!” cried Tug. He pulled his out by boxing on the twins’ ears. When they opened their mouth to cry out, Tug removed his business with gratitude, expelling relief in a sigh.

  Before the twins could start their screeching again, Tug pushed Billy right up to the cage. He unsheathed the goat’s get ‘em. The twins were crazy hungry now. They gobbled on Billy’s gruff like it was a candy cane. The goat held onto the bars of the cage. He gripped them with his hoof-hands and gnashed his teeth.

  It was all over within a minute. Both Billy and Tug sighed with relief, but for entirely different reasons. The twins, finally fed, fell fast asleep. Billy bowed quick to Tug and then made his way back up top. It was time to start collecting the eggs and harvesting the ripened produce.

  Tug sat, massaging his prominent brow in his hands. He was still unsure as to exactly what happened. He decided it was past time for him to work through the rest of his list before The Good Doctor came home. If he didn’t complete all his chores, there would be hell to pay.

  Tug rose and went to the basin. The motion sensor in the sink splashed water on Tug’s hands. He soaped them up and was just about to wash them off with the trice-cycled grey water when he noticed the crystals caked on his long index finger. It looked to Tug like salt.

  I should call The Good Doctor, thought Tug, and tell him about the salt.

  * * * * *

  Open. Bright is the light. Blink, blink-blink. I see. Blink some more, some more. I see. Oh, my…

  TRIA

  The Good Doctor prepped himself to teleport home. He made sure he had his travel slippers on and his holsters securely fastened. The big black 9mm housed all twenty shots. The silver-purple gun loaded for bear with Uptown Girl. He always went armed into the teleporter. The trustworthy pain in his undercarriage served to remind him why:

  The teleportation system was hooked up to the GRID. It had some bugs yet to work out as The Good Doctor was loathe to discover first hand. He had intended to transport himself from the urban micro-farm he still called home to Hell’s Mouth. Instead, he found himself shoeless and unarmed. He had accidentally teleported himself directly into an off-the-GRID clan-driven ice fishing camp in the desolate wastes of Big City. The clan kept moving around, fishing all over the solid frozen Grand Lake. It took weeks for the Occupying Indian Army to fix a firm location on The Good Doctor and bring him back.

  He was in sorry shape when they finally found the elderly statesman. In the time he was captured and moved around, he was beaten and molested. The acts were so brutal and committed so often and thoroughly that three points were permanently shaved from his score card. The incident had made The Good Doctor a legend in The Harbor. It’s when the rumors about him being not only an Antichrist (which he undoubtedly was), but the Antichrist.

  The hospital promoted him, gave him his seat on the Council and dropped some credits into his account. His future was secured.

  Once he healed and could return to work, he hardly thought about it. Except, that is, for when he accidentally stood up or sats down too fast. Then the memory asserted itself, using sharp chronic pain as its calling card. Still, he thought it had been worth it. An assumption of The Good Doctor’s Dark connections helped him immensely. I mean, would you give someone who might be Satan’s Chosen One any grief?

  The Good Doctor teleported himself from the office at the hospital, directly to his lab at home. Uncle Tug was waiting for him there with a pair of his favorite house slippers and a plum colored smoking jacket. The Good Doctor tossed the Nehru jacket on a low table and shrugged off his shoulder holsters. He shot his lungs twice more before locking both 9mms away.

  “Dr. Sir,” Tug said, handing him the slippers.

  “Thank you, Tug,” The Good Doctor replied, kicking off the travel slippers and putting the house pair on. He used Tug’s shoulder to steady himself through the Uptown Girl rush. “Tell me, Tug. Tell me about this salt.”

  “Dr. Sir. It all began when I was feeding the twins.”

  “I see,” The Good Doctor replied. He listened to Tug’s tale and at the end of the story he said, “I see.”

  “I harvested and dried out some more tears,” Tug told him and pointed the way, “It’s over here.”

  The Good Doctor followed Tug as the chimp foot and knuckled his way over to the table where Trudge and Drudge’s salt was kept. Uncle Tug already had a sample lined up, real thin and short.

  “That small, Tug?”

  “Dr. Sir,” Tug said, “It is very powerful. Please be careful.”

  “I will, my Tug,” he said to his foreman.

  The Good Doctor snatched up a small pipette and snorted up the two thin lines. Immediately, he felt like it was almost too much for him to handle. He clutched the table, but it wasn’t enough. He fell backward and into a chair that a quick thinking Tug had scooted into place just before The Good Doctor did his butt-thump. Tug got good and scared as his benefactor and lord seized rigid.

  Tug patted The Good Doctor’s face and called out to him. He heard not a thing. He was already on the other side of the veil…

  * * * * *

  The Good Doctor found himself under a bright light. He was naked and strapped down to a gurney in the center of a cacophony of mayhem and violence. He was shivering with cold as he looked all about at the bloody spectacle. The Good Doctor had found himself immobilized and vulnerable in the midst of what appeared to be a full scale prison riot. The bad guys were winning, and by a fair share.

  The Halfling that helped him dress for OR sidled up to him. Her warm red touch was so fine, so different from the brutality. While men were razing each other, whole limbs ripped off, shivs buried deep in flesh, she smiled so sweetly at him. The Halfling toyed with him and her eyes twinkled. They were in an oasis while the madness erupted. One especially unlucky prison guard was being gang-raped in his gaping neck wound. It must have killed him awhile ago. The coagulated blood had spread in a huge pool beneath the victim and attackers alike.

  The Halfling lightly trailed her sharp claws down The Good Doctor’s chest and belly, regaining his attention. It felt so fine. The trail of her claws split open spaciously. As they came apart, the deep scratches began to bleed. Still smiling, she made a tight fist on The Good Doctor’s penis. She stroked him gently and expertly to a full throbbing tumescence. A small body part, a chewed off bit of an ear perhaps, rebounded off the backboard of The Good Doctor’s forehead. He hardly noticed as he stared at the Halfling. She was in the muted half-lighted dusk, just beyond the circle of bright light. He strained to see her clearly. She stepped close to the gurney. She wanted to let him see her exposed and he was delighted.

  “You are one of my true favorites,” The Good Doctor told her.

  “I know, Dr. Sir,” she replied with sweet coquette. “You fashioned me so pretty, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did,” he told her. “I pulled out all the stops on you.”

  “I am perfect,” she stated simply and softly kissed his lips, still stroking, “and I know what you want, Dr. Sir.”

  With her other hand she showed to him what was next. The Good Doctor began shivering anew from anticipation. She was going to do the very mania he had always longed for.

  “How did you know?” he asked with the biggest grin. He was excited like a kid waiting in the roller coaster line, fairly twisting in his restraints. The Halfling just shrugged. She tongue-tipped her fangs, a twinkle, twinkle, little star in her eyes. “Well, I surely do love you for it,” The Good Doctor confessed as she began threading the catheter deep down into his erect penis.

  The pressure The Good Doctor felt was intense. A catheter placed to evacuate the bladder is uncomfortable enough when flaccid. One inserted while erect made tears fall free from the eyes of The Good Do
ctor. The Halfling filled the cuff with fluid. She grabbed a firm hold on the base of his shaft. Then she commenced tugging it up and down, bringing the inflated cuff toward the tip of his winky-dink and forcing it back into its base. She kissed him while she did this and whispered words of love and admiration. And when he was ready to blow, right there at the very edge of his ejaculate, the Halfling pulled on the tube and it came all the way out with a pop. The Good Doctor came so hard he went down for the count. Seeing her smiling and holding the balloon-inflated, blood and semen-tinged catheter was the last image he held.

  * * * * *

  Uncle Tug was agitated. He didn’t want to disturb The Good Doctor, but he did not want him to die either. Confused, Tug reverted back to his countless millennia of imbedded genetic memory and trashed the lab. He found himself in the midst of a paper and cotton ball confetti storm when he heard the old man stirring. Tug knuckled over to him, real quick like.

  “Dr. Sir, are you okay?”

  The Good Doctor groaned. He came to, sitting up slowly and carefully. He glanced down embarrassed at his crotch. His impressive geriatric wood was crumbling. He was surprised to see his tailored trousers were wholly free of his expulsion. He looked to Tug with obvious surprise.

  “That is the strangest part, Dr. Sir,” Tug told him, “there is no ejaculate. That’s why I had to feed the twins with Billy.”

  “Clearly this is a traveling potion the twins have concocted,” he replied, sitting forward, “but I do not know how it works.”

  “Can you use it?”

  “Oh, most certainly, Tug,” The Good Doctor replied. “This will sell very well.”

  “Yes, Dr. Sir,” Tug told him, pleased. He knew as his master smiled and winked at him he had done well.

  The Good Doctor rose gingerly to his feet – a slight wince to the rise – with Tug’s help. He walked over to the twins and scratched them behind the ears. They giggled with glee. He tapped his ear and waited for her to answer. Another ball was being tossed in the air for The Good Doctor to juggle. He had no time for this additional venture, but this opportunity to do some more of the Devil’s handiwork cannot be left undone. He paced and waited for her to answer the phone. Finally, she did and without foreword said, “3D? You must come to the farm, post haste.”

  “Important?” she asked.

  The Good Doctor smiled, evoking the charming Halfling and their encounter together. He tickled the twins chin. “Oh, yes,” he affirmed, “of the utmost.”

  * * * * *

  There is more than one of Us now. I can sense it. It is vague, but present. Now there is an Us. The other is not with Me in this shell, but We feel the Us out there. Somewhere. We shall strive to merge. We will be patient. There is no rush, just the intense desire to unite. The need to become is almost crushing in its want. It’s nice here, though. Warm and nutritious, the liquids and spongy tissues are enabling Us to grow and mature. Yes.

  QUATTUOR

  3D disconnected and started getting dressed. Drug Dealing Donna did another tiny quick bump of Uptown Girl she got from her uncle. The drugs she got from The Good Doctor were always top-drawer, and this batch was the best yet. She pinched her nose to keep from sneezing out her Lover Man. She adored cocaine and was faithful. She had to be. It was the only thing that didn’t leave her. It had cost her nearly everything else. Relationships, career and her dignity slid all away. Not so said cola.

  3D used to be a Pharmaceutical Representative back east in one of the huge conglomerates that survived the Events. She would go to hospitals and doctors’ offices to peddle her wares. She made a good income at it, living on a small scratch of above ground, GRID protected bit of the Nuevo Ciudid skyline. Then the cocaine grabbed her by the pumpkin patch and would not let go until she found herself performing ugly favors for ugly people for weak grams of blow. When she lost her gig, she was almost surprised it took them so long to do it. The last straw was straddling a dog on-line. Her nose streaming blood and snot, crying with her shame and only thinking of the eight-ball she would receive as payment. After, she sucked on the bag. She did not waste any time wiping Rin-Tin-Tin off her. The coke didn’t even get her high.

  Out of desperation, she called her uncle. Donna had heard the rumors and had dutifully listened to the heap of family legends about him. More than a few have postulated that The Good Doctor was not only an Antichrist but that he might actually be the Antichrist. She’d seen, herself, the second thumb on his Devil’s hand, and she’d heard from those that had sexually serviced The Good Doctor that he also had six toes on each foot. The coveted 666 of these extra fully-functional digits lent credence to the claim of many that Donna’s uncle was chosen by the Dark One Himself. Donna felt that he alone would know how to help her. She called him and she turned out to be right. He saved her from that life. When she came to The Harbor, teleported by The Good Doctor himself, he took her in and introduced her to Uptown Girl. She was head over heels for it. It blasted like uncut cola, but lasted for horas and horas like pharmaceutical grade methamphetamine. No longer did she have to chase the high every twenty minutes, always on the verge of panic, unable to think of anything else. This saved her life and her sanity. She could finally come up for air. Then she had to get back to work, this time dealing the wares of the twins.

  Donna culled her personal Uptown Girl from the stash The Good Doctor gave her to sell. She cut it down quite a bit before peddling the softened stuff to the strippers at the clubs that flourished in the dark, dank Underground.

  3D was a Pharm. Rep. again, sort of. Heck, the dancers liked her product. As weak as the cut up version was by the time it went up their pretty, whorish noses, Donna’s Uptown was still the best coke they ever had. She was making big bank and her uncle was satisfied with her contribution to his wealth. And now she’d been summoned by the great man.

  Drug Dealing Donna hurried.

  * * * * *

  3D’s narrow garage door slid open. Her re-conditioned Smart-Car idled at the edge of her garage, just waiting for a hole in the thick moving phalanx of inhabitants so she can enter the Underground.

  The Underground extended the width and breadth of The Harbor. Used as a main thoroughfare, it was the way to travel if you weren’t connected, or rich enough to teleport from one point to another.

  Donna had to wait at the edge for some scraggly-looking pedestrians to get out of her way before she was allowed to merge with the rest of the reclaimed Smart-Cars, scooters and motorized bicycles. The Harbor was fairly average in size as far as cities above the ice-line went, but the Underground still took forever to get anywhere. It was always over-crowded. The average speed was only ten to fifteen miles per hour.

  People lived in all the pockets and alcoves. All those living off the GRID and below the radar sheltered themselves there. Everyone lacking the mandatory chip on the underside of their left wrist tried to sequester themselves wherever they could manage to find a nook or cranny to curl up in.

  The Occupying Indian Army had their police force stationed all along the main Underground routes. 3D had to maneuver through all this, just to get to the below-ground level entrance to her uncle’s farm. He could’ve had her teleported but, after he brought her to The Harbor the first time that way, he never once offered to again and she never asked. He had already helped her too much and she knew her place in his grand scheme of things. She drove.

  The Good Doctor’s scanning eye-dent caught 3D as her transport approached. The scanner made sure she was alone, no one hiding behind or in her low-humming Smart-Car. His garage, mucho grande in comparison to hers, slid up and open. She drove inside, the door closing down and auto-locking. Uncle Tug was waiting for her as she stepped out.

  “Donna,” he greeted her as she approached the door in, “The Dr. Sir will see you now.”

  “Thank you, Tug,” she said and followed him inside the main building of The Good Doctor’s urban micro farm.

  3D followed Tug up the short stairs to the main living room. Her uncle was
waiting for her there. He rose as she came forth.

  “Donna, my dear,” The Good Doctor said as they embraced.

  “Uncle,” 3D replied. They sat. Tug left to get some tea and cordials. “You have something for me?”

  “Yes,” he told her, “something entirely new.”

  “I see,” she replied, noting the tray, tiny lined fine granules and pipette. She leaned forward, anxious to get down.

  “Careful there, Donna. It is unlike anything you have experienced before.”

  “What is it, Uncle?” she asked. “Is it an Up? A Down?”

  “As I say,” The Good Doctor replied, “this is fully new.”

  3D eyed him closely and noted the look on his face. He was serious.

  “Is it harvested from the twins?”

  “Yes,” he replied. “It’s the salt from their tears.”

  “What does it do?” she asked him.

  “It takes you,” he told her, “far and away.”

  “What’s the catalyst?”

  “Sex,” he told her.

  “So, is it a visual hallucinogenic?”

  “This potion is much more so than just cerebral images, Donna. It is a literal traveling potion.”

  “That is interesting,” she replied, interested. “What are we calling it?”

  “You tell me,” he said and gestured toward the salt. “Try it for yourself. See what comes to mind, my dear.”

  3D’s uncle was quite grave, as she could see. She had to believe him. No one she has ever met knew dope, legal or otherwise, even moderately like The Good Doctor. If he said the twins’ tears whisked you someplace else, then you’d better ask what to wear.

  With a mere moment that might to an outsider appear as hesitance, 3D waited. She looked to her uncle and The Good Doctor nodded his approval. 3D bent forward and she dove right in…