Go, Mutants!

by Larry Doyle

  “Early still,” Schloss satisfied himself.

  “I think this terrifying costume is scaring off customers,” J!m said.

  Schloss was not a coddler.

  “Jimmy,” he said, entre nous and to anyone within fifty feet, “you want to be in the business? Well, this is the show of the business.” He swatted the glitter balls sideways, whacking J!m’s ears. “I gotta zoom. You good?”

  “Stellar.”

  Shouting as he strode off: “Customer.”

  J!m glanced wearily, then panicked. He reached for the glitter balls, but it was too late.

  Russ hummed up in the Ballistic, Marie beside him, with Sandra Jane and Tubesteak in the back, well into the evening’s festivities.

  “Hey,” Russ said, “it’s Vagittarius from the planet Uranus.”

  Tubesteak found this inordinately rib-tickling, so much so that he took his hands out of Sandra Jane in order to slap his thighs.

  Marie looked embarrassed for J!m, or to know him, or so J!m thought, when it was quite the opposite.

  “C’mon,” taunted Russ, “do your speech.”

  “Surrender, Earthling,” J!m said flatly, fingering his ray gun, the setting that toggled between SCAN and STUN.

  from the road it looked like a concrete bunker, partially hidden by trees, unmarked but for a small and typically unlit fluorescent sign:

  It was a bar by license, but in hiring practice it became an intergalactic smorgasbord of xenosexual delights, females of fancy species serving drinks and offering cultural exchange to human males seeking some strange.

  Stepping inside was like entering another world, or several other worlds, all jumbled together by no coherent design, as if somebody had plastered heaps of native artifacts from assorted civilizations on the walls, thinking their difference made them all alike, which is what someone did.

  Onstage a tired combo played an unenthusiastic cover of a recent popular song, a middle-aged man singing:

  Well, I’m your Venus,

  I’m your fire at your desire.

  In cages suspended from the asbestos ceiling, She Beasts thrashed about, though not to the music.

  Miw was in the back, putting on her cat face.

  “Kid didn’t mean it, Miw,” said her colleague Lilitu, a Venusian Succubix of indeterminate age, lightly freckled with a ruby poodle cut and carnelian eyes. “He’s just a boy,” she rasped. “Boys will be boys.”

  She was one, to be talking about other people’s children.

  “And speaking of, boys will pay to be boys, Miw; you could triple your take-home, two minutes in a private pod . . .”

  Miw winced. Film school was expensive, but—

  “That fur ain’t mink, sister.”

  “I know, Lil.”

  “And besides, it’s fun,” she cracked, coughed. “They’re so afraid I’m gonna suck out their spine. But that’s extra.”

  Mickey Mansfield, aged beefcake, drew back the curtain to the dressing area.

  “Persia, Desiree,” he called them by nom, “they’re not here for the drinks.”

  Lilitu slinked up to Mickey, tracing a crimson talon down his neck. “Hey, Mickey,” she husked, “can I sing tonight?”

  Mickey said no before she finished speaking.

  Lilitu, wheedling: “When can I sing, Mickey?”

  “When I’m dead.”

  As Mickey left, Lilitu’s eyes glowed red.

  the night was immense, a billion trillion stars out there and all of them out tonight. To the west was Regulus, his paternal home, among the brightest but still 500 million million miles away; an inch above it, μ Leonis, his mother’s system, faint and twice as far. The stars were old news, packets of light sent from the distant past, but watching the skies was decidedly more entertaining than what was showing at the drive-in, and less heartbreaking than what was transpiring in the Ballistic thirty feet away.

  His attention shifted to the screen, where the Mutant Teen had come home from having killed a local kid. He wanted to turn himself in, but his Domineering Mother wanted to move to another town, like they always did when he killed a local kid.

  “Dad . . . answer her,” the Mutant Teen appealed to his Ineffectual Father. “Aren’t you going to stand up for me?”

  He was not. The Mutant Teen yelled, “Dad?” and leapt at his Ineffectual Father. He began choking him with his mutant crab claw hand.

  “Stop it!” his Domineering Mother screamed. “You’ll kill him! Tony! Do you want to kill your father?”

  J!m could not believe that the man who directed In a Lonely Place and Johnny Guitar had done this. I Was a Teenage Mutant was cinematic sausage, ground up with perfunctory spices in amounts inoffensive to every palate and extruded for mass ingestion. To think that this was the film Nicholas Ray had been trying to make since before J!m was born, when it was Blind Run. (Only the late addition of mutation had gotten it made; no studio wanted a movie about a teenager who malfunctioned for no good reason.) The project had been so long aborning that the Ineffectual Father was played by the actor Ray had originally wanted for the lead, an exciting young performer from the early days of broadcast viz who saw his career cut short when he was conscripted for the Martian Conflict, which bled into the Giant Ant Problem and the Pod Situation. By the time he got out, James Dean was thirty and barely able to play teenagers. He became best known as Dr. Phil Brewer, the rakish rapist on General Hospital, and this piece of work wasn’t going to change that.

  J!m leaned against the cinderblock, smoking a Red Ball, looking at the stars, the screen, anywhere but the Ballistic, right in front of him, where he could not have missed Russ reaching over and pulling Marie to him.

  J!m tossed the cigarette and turned away, suddenly wishing he had hugged his mother goodbye.

  marie, nestled uncomfortably in Russ’s arm, shifted her shoulders up and down, which worked for him as well.

  “Hey, you grew boobs over the summer.”

  “What a lovely compliment.”

  Russ, suspicious: “They are . . . boobs, right?”

  Marie disarmed Russ and slid back onto her side.

  “So,” she said, resetting to cordial, “why’d you break up with Carol Webster?”

  “She got fat.”

  Tubesteak added from the back, “She had to go to the Home for Unwed Fat Girls.”

  Sandra Jane perched in his lap, befriending him with her buttocks. “Tell me, Tubesteak,” wiggle, wiggle, “why do they call you Tubesteak?”

  “I love me some tubesteak!” Tubesteak said.

  “Oh,” Sandra Jane said.

  She readjusted her skirt, causing J!m’s Severed Hand, which had been diligently crawling up her leg, to lose its grip and fall to the floor.

  the bar was lousy with kiwanis, bused in from Springdale, where they had destroyed all their female aliens years ago and were regretting it now. They arrived polite and upstanding but, unaccustomed to freely available intoxicants and exotic creatures who, after a few intoxicants, also appeared to be freely available, they became feisty, and Mickey had to knock a few of them out. It was another Friday night.

  Miw was run off her feet. High traffic in and out of the private pods left her one of the few servers on the floor, besides that poor dear from Alpha Fuglii, who never got asked to a pod but was as friendly as could be. Miw navigated the tables, past a Bovon topping off a gentleman’s white Russian, past yet another Kiwani explaining that the organization’s name was an old Indian saying meaning “We have a good time,” crossing Lilitu, who was helping a satisfied, trembling customer back to his table, and arriving at the miserable little table commanded by Dr. Howard Rand.

  “Herd of brainless, soulless robots,” he proclaimed, though not to her.

  Miw deposited the Red Spot (a Jupitini with cranberry over dry ice) and dropped the baby voice.

  “That’s three, Doctor. You’re not going to stand on the table and give us all an anatomy lesson again?”

  “Sit, sit,” bobbing his head i
n time. “Sit.”

  “I’ll have to order a drink.”

  Dr. Rand swayed in agreement, and Miw sat, gesturing to Nyah, the Devil Girl from Mars, who sneered. Miw wasn’t going to drink what she brought in any event.

  “What’s on your mind, Howard?”

  “Why do you wear that degrading outfit?”

  She employees wore their native costumes, provided they were skimpy enough, but Leonine females wore nothing at all, which clashed with the liquor license, so Miw had concocted an indigenish cat suit of black leather teddy, gloves and a whip. She wasn’t proud of it.

  “Tips,” she answered. “Anything else?”

  Dr. Rand began to sob. “I don’t know what to do, Miw,” correcting, “Persia.”

  “Ohhhh,” her empathy getting the best of her, “what’s wrong, baby?”

  In a whisper of despair: “I’m supposed to be out finding her a body.”

  “We’re all using ours here.”

  “No, no, no,” he kept shaking his head. “Has to be human. And fresh. How can—? Does she really expect me to—”

  He closed his eyes and listed forward, and Miw thought, hoped, he had passed out. He sighed dramatically. He sighed twice more, the second one woefully and the third one for oxygen.

  “It was my fault.”

  Nyah brusqued by, dropping off milk in a champagne flute. Funny girl.

  “It was all my fault,” Dr. Rand teed her up again.

  “No, Howard,” Miw consoled. “No, Howard. It was your quick thinking that saved Susan’s head. And the baby.”

  “She wanted to have Marie at the hospital. I insisted on saving money by doing it at the lab.

  “Oh, Miw. Miw, Miw.” Dr. Rand grasped Miw’s hand, petting the back of it.

  “I have to charge you for that, too,” she said.

  another many-splendored thing was developing at the drive-in, unbeknownst to one of the participants, a love that dared not speak its name, for fear of injury, a love forbidden, if she got wind of it. Jelly would have to be subtle and shrewd to pull it off, or perhaps devious would suffice.

  They sat in the cab of his parents’ primitive Ford pick-up, an off-the-PLEX model that required dead dinosaurs to run. Jelly was behind the wheel, a jumbo popcorn in his lap. Rusty was affixed to the passenger door.

  “Popcorn?” Jelly asked, extending his lap to her.

  She did not like the way the kernels were agitating in the tub, emptying from the inside. “No, thanks.”

  Jelly rested his arm on the seat back, coming within two feet of his target.

  “Yeah,” he said, “so it turns out I’m the Godless Spawn of Science Run Amok,” already turning the central trauma of his life into date bait. “I was not a good boy.” His arm began oozing in her direction. “According to history, I was a very bad boy . . .”

  “I thought Johnny was coming,” Rusty said, cracking open her door.

  johnny was already there, had ridden past them, going by several empty spaces to the very end of the row, where an older model Edsel was parked.

  Johnny climbed into the backseat, as per the arrangement.

  “You’re late,” her face hidden in the shadow of an extravagant hat.

  Johnny shrugged and started to get out of the car.

  She grabbed him by the fur. Soft and low, growing in intensity and pitch, she began:

  “Oo oo oo-oo-oo oo-oo-OO-OO-OO-OO!”

  She threw her head back with a final pant-hoot, her hat coming off, her bun undone.

  Deputy Peg Furry came at him with an open mouth.

  “look at me now, dad!” the Teenage Mutant shouted from the roof of the planetarium. The police fired. The Teenage Mutant dropped the grenade and blew the dome to kingdom come.

  That would be the way to go, J!m thought, a blaze of glory, not felled by a headache.

  He would not be so lucky. Not tonight.

  J!m tied his apron and went inside to prepare for the onslaught.

  Chapter 13

  In Naked Screaming Terror!

  the cob ran through the corn, panting, beams of light incinerating the stalks in its wake. The husk broke out of the field and found itself on a country road, alone.

  A hum, from above.

  The saucers were everywhere.

  The first blast shucked it, to its risible distress.

  Tubesteak giggled at the nude vegetable, giving up on the clasp of Sandra Jane’s brassiere, after spending the last seven minutes grappling with it.

  A barrage of lasers hit the cob, turning cartoon kernels into live-action popcorn, soon spilling to the edges of the screen.

  Resigned to having to do everything, Sandra Jane reached back to unclasp her bra; the hooks felt tiny, and when she undid them, the straps flew apart as if relieved of a great burden. Sandra Jane made a note to start throwing up again.

  Onscreen, a jaunty jingle animated a parade of refreshments, eagerly marching to their consumption.

  Oh, we’re salty and we’re sweet

  We’re your favorite kind of treat

  Whatever your tummy wishes,

  We’re willing and delicious

  So go to the concessions . . .

  . . . and purchase us to eat!

  Tubesteak hummed along while Sandra Jane licked the back of his teeth. She came up for air, chugged from a flask, spat the liquid into Tubesteak’s mouth and went after it, passing the pint to the front.

  Russ offered the bottle to Marie first, wiping the rim with his sleeve, twin courtesies he rarely accorded girls already in his car.

  “Hip Rocket?”

  Marie, dryly: “What year?”

  Russ poured several ounces of the fortified mixed berry beverage into his open mouth, gargled, and swallowed.

  “Tuesday.”

  That was a little witty, Marie conceded, a tactical error, because here he came.

  “Are you going to kiss me?”

  “You gonna stop me?”

  She didn’t stop him, choosing rather to discourage him through passive resistance, which worked as well as one might expect.

  J!m’s Severed Hand, meanwhile, had crawled to the front. It grabbed on to the gearshift and swung up onto the seat.

  Russ slobbered in the general area of Marie’s mouth while she waited for him to finish. She felt fingers on her knee, light and soon gone, so did nothing about it.

  J!m’s Severed Hand detected squalene, a natural hydrocarbon found in sharks and sexually aroused human females, whether they wanted to be or not. The hand turned in the direction of the lubricant, raised its index finger, and unleashed the worm.

  Marie got a peculiar look on her face. She pushed Russ off her and scooted away, flushed. The hand fell to the floor and scrambled under the seat.

  “Could you get me a Coke?” asked Marie, flustered, and flummoxed at finding herself flustered.

  Russ was not thrilled, but “Yeah, okay. C’mon, Tubesteak.”

  Tubesteak looked up from between Sandra Jane’s breasts.

  “Hey, I’m mating.”

  “Coke with a Dopa-Blast?” Russ asked Marie.

  “Just a Coke, please.”

  Russ hopped out of the Ballistic, followed by Tubesteak, slamming a fist into his groin.

  Russ snapped his fingers as they passed the adjacent TurboFlite. Toad and Ice piled out, joined by Bennie after a synaptic delay.

  “Get me a Fizh!” Mil barked.

  “Squared!” yipped Hel.

  sandra jane rooted around in her purse, looking for a new face, having rubbed the last one off on Tubesteak’s pants. She also had chilled advice for her friend.

  “Stop playing hard-to-get, Marie.”

  “Oh?”

  “Because you’re not that much to get.” Sandra Jane touched the BeeKist wand to her mouth, swarming the tissue with apitoxin-releasing nanomites. “Don’t ruin this. It’s our chance to move up, join the human race.”

  “I am human.”

  “Act like it.” Her facial labia swelled to
a lovely, septic red. She couldn’t feel them, but that had its advantages.

  “marie would like a coke.”

  Russ said the word “Marie” like he owned it. He winked and added, “To rinse out her mouth.”

  Behind J!m’s head,

  the bottle detonated into the insatiable face of Marilyn Briggs, the model turned actress in one of the few recent films J!m could stomach, The Last Picture Show.

  “I would think so,” J!m said. He placed a cup under the AutoJerk, dispensing the brown syrup, water and spritz of liquid carbon dioxide, and slid the frosty, fizzy soda across the counter.

  “Would she like a Euthanex with that?”

  Russ grabbed the cup and headed for the exit. His crew, who had accessorized their jackets with bottles and snacks, and in Bennie’s case exclusively chocolate, followed.

  “Adding larceny to your portfolio?” J!m asked.

  Russ turned back.

  “What’re you gonna do? Viz my dad?”

  J!m reached for the com.

  several teens in their late twenties were gathered around a beach bonfire, listening to a Prefab Teen Idol tell his spooky story, delivered with the sunny dysphonia he brought to every line.

  “And they say the creature’s still out there . . .” his face lit by flames that eerily mimicked a Roscolux #2002 gel, “. . . out there combing the beaches for promiscuous teenagers!”

  “That’s-a some scary sheep!” a floppy-eared furry alien whimpered.

  “You don’t have anything to worry about, Moondog!” the Idol quipped. “You’re the opposite of promiscuous. Ugly!”

  “I bite you!” Moondog snarled, for the twenty-first time onscreen, not counting the thousands on the street, at restaurants, and, on three occasions, at a urinal. Moondog Barkley, né Tazhi Spai, was a Kuôn from the Sirius system; a classically trained woofer on his home planet, he was studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio and trying without success to get his version of Othello off the ground.