Asskickers of the Fantastic

by Jim Stenstrum

  He called his fortress Golden Claw, because it sounded like what a James Bond villain might call his secret lair. He didn’t have a submarine yet, or operate out of a dormant volcano, but all these things would come in time.

  Joey Clawhammer ruled the universe and it would soon pay him homage. In a couple years, he was certain, Robert Downey Jr. would portray him in a big Hollywood movie, with Charlize Theron as his adoring and obedient wife, and Russell Crowe as his treacherous, and now deceased, older brother.

  He was indestructible, a force of nature, the god of hurricanes. He was Goldfinger, Dr. No and Ernst Stavro Blofeld all rolled up into one super crime lord. There was no man who could stop him and no woman who could resist his charms. Given enough time, he would learn to shit steak dinners and piss Margaritas.

  No doubt about it. The future looked very, very bright for Joey Clawhammer.

  Somebody buzzed the front door. Joey’s 400 pound Samoan bodyguard, Tiku, checked the video monitor and saw a delivery man holding a pizza box.

  “Who the hell is that?” asked Joey, bent over a coffee table in his office, looking up from the coke rails he was snorting through a solid gold straw.

  “It’s for me, boss. I ordered pizza,” said Tiku.

  Joey blew his top.

  “What the fuck, Tiku? You’re bringing civilians here? To Golden Claw?”

  “I was hungry. I’ve been counting money all day.” He gave Joey the pouty face, which usually calmed him down.

  “You fat fuck. Get rid of him.” Joey snorted two more rails and rubbed some coke on his gums. “Jesus Christ, I’m surrounded by idiots.”

  Tiku lumbered to the reinforced steel front door and slid back the heavy security bar. He opened the door and reached for his wallet.

  The delivery man stood in the rain, holding a pizza box, but something about this picture was terribly wrong. The man had black pits for eyes, and the rest of him looked like a shriveled up mummy. He gurgled up blood and dropped the pizza box, then toppled forward, falling lifeless at Tiku’s feet.

  Tiku looked up to see a man and woman he didn’t recognize standing behind the body. The man smiled and introduced himself.

  “Hi. I’m Danny and this is my girlfriend, Naomi. How ya doin’ tonight?”

  Chapter 10

  “Werewolves, you say.”

  The Studebaker prowled the dark, rainswept streets in search of the mysterious woman. It was after midnight when Rex left the FBI offices, and by then the trail was ice cold. Still, he was certain this woman had the answers he needed about the bus massacre, so he kept at it, driving a circuitous path back to his apartment in the small hope of finding her.

  Ahead was a stop light, and he slowed the car to a stop. A young woman ran out of the shadows and approached the car, tapping urgently on the passenger side window. He rolled down the window and the soaked woman stuck her head inside the car.

  “Nice car, handsome,” Crayon said with a practiced smile, dripping on his reconditioned red upholstery. “How would you like to party in that big back seat?”

  Rex stared angrily at the girl. Crayon gasped when she recognized him, becoming thoroughly flustered.

  “Oh shit,” she said with a gulp. “I… uh… I gotta go. See ya!”

  She hurried away from the car, panicked, and ran around the corner.

  Rex slowly followed her in the car. When she quickened her pace he stayed with her. She made a sharp turn into a private alley, hopped over a chain strung across the entrance, and ran down the alley at full speed.

  Stopping the car at the chain, he jumped out and started after the girl, who was already a hundred feet ahead of him. She ran, breathlessly looking behind her. The next instant, she ran smack into Rex, who had somehow, incredibly, appeared in front of her.

  Crayon recoiled, her eyes wide with fear. She tried to twist free of his grip, but Rex hung on. He shook her to stop her struggling, and then looked her over with a severe eye.

  “I save your life, and this is what you do with it?”

  Rex pulled her by the wrist, dragging her back to his car. Crayon became scared, and tried to wrestle free.

  “What are you doing? Where are you taking me?”

  “I’m taking you home. I’ll bet your parents will have something to say about this.”

  His grip was unbreakable, as if she was being pulled behind a bulldozer.

  “What? I’m not going anywhere. Let me go, you perv!”

  She tried kicking him, to no effect. At last he got her to the car, and she started to scream. The streets were deserted, and her cries went unheard.

  Rex opened the car door and tried to push her inside. But as soon as he had her almost inside, her hand would clamp onto the car roof. He would pull her hand away and she would kick out a foot. It was like trying to stuff an octopus into a pair of Spanx.

  Finally, he got the girl inside and slammed the door. She immediately pressed the lock button on the passenger door and flipped him the finger. Turning to lock the door on the driver’s side, she was astonished to see Rex already sitting in the driver’s seat.

  “Omigod! How do you do that?” she said.

  Rex started the car, and drove away before she could hop out. “Buckle up,” he told her.

  There was an uncomfortable silence in the car for the next several blocks. At last, Crayon screwed up the courage to say something.

  “I guess you’re kinda pissed off at me, huh?”

  He made no reply, continuing to drive.

  “It’s just hard out there, you know? Sometimes you gotta do some shitty stuff just to get by.”

  He kept driving, not even looking at her. She tried another, friendlier tact, one that usually worked on her more volatile clients.

  “I’m Crayon, by the way. Crayon Oleander,” she said, giving him a big grin.

  Rex continued to ignore her.

  “This is where you tell me your name.”

  He hit the brakes and for a couple seconds just glared at her. Then he spoke.

  “The name is Rex Havoc, not that you’ll ever have any occasion to use it. Just tell me where you live and I’ll drop you off.”

  Crayon thought about this for a bit, wondering whether or not to tell him the truth. At last she gave in, weary of the rain and this whole very strange night.

  “Take the next left up ahead. We’re almost there.”

  Soon they arrived at a shabby hotel, where a couple of prostitutes were standing under the entrance awning, chatting and sharing a joint. At the center of this was a muscular man in a shiny purple suit with lots of gold chains, a Ukrainian named Sergei.

  Rex peered at the man in the weird purple clothes. “Is that your father?”

  “Jesus Christ, you are fucking clueless. That’s my pimp. Thanks for the ride home, asshole.”

  She got out of the car and slammed the door after her. He watched as she walked up to the pimp and started arguing with him. When the pimp slapped her, Rex got out of the car.

  “Who’s this fuck?” said the pimp, giving Rex the stink eye as he approached.

  “He’s a friend. Leave him alone, Sergei,” said Crayon.

  “Did he pay you?” Sergei asked her, growing agitated.

  “It’s not like that. He helped me.”

  He turned to Rex and repeated the question. “Did you pay her, asshole?” Sergei patted a Tokarev pistol he had in his waistband.

  Reflexively, Rex snatched the pimp’s hand and yanked it upward. He twisted the man’s hand completely backward, snapping his wrist and effectively giving him two left hands. The pimp screamed in agony, falling to his knees and cradling his broken wrist, which was now attached only by veins and tendons.

  Rex grabbed Crayon’s arm and pulled her back to the car. As they drove away, she started screaming at him.

  “Omigod! I’m in such trouble. Do you have any idea what he’s going to do to me?”

  Rex was unfazed. “You’re not going to see him anymore.”

  “Great. Now I
have no job and no place to sleep.”

  “You’re coming home with me. You can stay there until I can send you home to your parents.”

  She started banging on the dashboard and he scowled at her, concerned she would damage his classic interior.

  “Why do I attract all the weirdos?!” she shrieked.

  Twenty minutes later, Rex and Crayon pulled up in front of his apartment building. As they got out of the car, she looked ready to bolt.

  “Look, run away, I really don’t care,” said Rex. “But you should at least get out of the rain.”

  He walked up the steps to his building as Crayon leaned against the car, arms folded defiantly.

  “Hmph. Thanks to you, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”

  A dazzling bolt of lightning lit up the sky followed by a clap of thunder, scaring the hell out of her.

  “Okay, I’ll hang out. Just for a while.”

  She ran up to the front door and followed Rex up the weird staircase. Everything about the place set off alarms telling her to run for the hills, but she was all out of options. At the top of the stairs, he opened the door and let her into the apartment.

  Inside, Crayon was astonished by the vast accumulation of bizarre trophies. Everywhere she looked she saw weird animal skulls and strange weapons and otherworldly gadgets. There were stacks of books and magazines piled to the ceiling, and in a corner she saw a box of spooky Rex Havoc voodoo dolls. It was a five star lunatic asylum, she thought, but it was dry and she was determined to brass it out.

  “Wow, you’ve got a super creepy apartment. What a shocker.”

  She followed Rex into the front room, keeping one eye on the exit as she did. There were a dozen TVs on, all tuned to news coverage of the bus massacre.

  “You like TV, huh?” asked Crayon.

  He picked up the remote and turned them off. He pointed to a door down the hall.

  “There’s the bathroom. Go dry off. There’s a robe in there if you want to get out of those wet clothes.”

  She gave him a half-assed thank you and disappeared into the bathroom.

  Rex took off his leather coat and laid it over a chair next to the couch. He walked over to the file cabinets behind his desk and started pulling out reference folders.

  A few minutes later, Crayon emerged from the bathroom, wearing Rex’s black Asskicker robe and a towel wrapped around her wet hair. She saw that he was busy, so she began to poke around the kitchen, looking for something to eat. Opening the refrigerator, she saw an ugly, alien-looking pod inside. It looked really gross, like something alive was moving inside it, and she quickly shut the door.

  “Um, mister? You got anything to eat in this crypt? Like Count Chocula or whatever.”

  “There’s food in the cupboard.”

  She opened a cupboard above the kitchen sink, and found it completely filled with packages of rice cakes. She opened the other cupboards, and found only rice cakes in all of them.

  “You know what, why don’t we order some take out? You like Chinese food?”

  “I don’t eat those exotic foods.”

  She sulked, really hungry, then remembered something.

  “Never mind. I think I have something with me.”

  She plopped down on the couch and started digging through her purse. She was thrilled to find an old Tootsie Pop.

  He paid no attention to her, continuing to pull fat folders out of the file cabinets and lay them on the desk.

  Crayon reached for the remote on the coffee table.

  “Can I watch TV?”

  “No. I have to work.”

  Thoroughly bored, she got up from the couch and walked over to his desk. She looked at the old Smith Corona, and was completely mystified.

  “What’s that thing?”

  “It’s a typewriter.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “Wha? It’s for writing. I use it to write my books.”

  “For real? Turn it on. Make it write something.”

  “It’s not – I mean, it doesn’t write by itself —”

  Rex was growing exasperated. He was seriously considering returning her to Sergei.

  Crayon spied a small stack of books on the desk with Rex’s name printed on the cover.

  “These some of your books?”

  He glanced at her, and then returned to his files.

  “Yes. Please don’t touch anything.”

  She picked up the books, reading the titles aloud.

  “‘Fuck You, Satan!’… ‘Up Yours, Lucifer!’… ‘Get Screwed, Beelzebub!’… Hmm, you’ve got kind of a theme going here, huh?”

  He snatched the books from her and returned them to the desk. He spoke to her in the most patient tone he could muster.

  “Yes, a damn important theme: The survival of the human race.”

  “So I guess you're really into this monster hunting stuff, huh?”

  “No greater threat to humanity exists than the evil that lurks in the dark recesses of the supernatural.”

  “That means ‘yes,’ right?”

  “Look, Crayola…”

  “Crayon.”

  “Listen, I'd love to chat, but I really have important work to do.”

  “It’s cool. You go ahead and work. Pretend I don’t even exist.”

  Crayon noticed the old painting across the room and the shrine with the lit candles beneath it.

  “Is that your grandmother?”

  Rex looked annoyed. “That’s Cotton Mather. A great hero in the war against witchcraft.”

  She walked over to the painting and saw the Malleus Maleficarum, opened and floating inside the glass case beneath.

  “Whoa! Is that book floating in there? How does it do that?”

  “Don't touch anything!”

  “I'll be careful.”

  She walked around a corner to a long hallway, where she saw a large framed photo of Rex and the Asskickers on the wall, and beneath it were three khaki shirts displayed on hangers. She examined one of the shirts, and saw a large Asskicker symbol printed on the back of it, although she had no idea what the symbol meant. The shirts had name tags on each of them, and these said: LARS, SPRINGER and BRUNO.

  On a small shelf near the shirts were more strange objects, including some old tobacco pipes and a fairly large and heavy lighter, fashioned to resemble Godzilla. She gave it a click and was delighted to see a big flame shoot out of its mouth.

  Crayon peeked around the corner and saw that Rex was still absorbed with his files. She ducked back into the hallway and slipped the Godzilla lighter into the pocket of the robe.

  A hand grabbed her arm and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Rex was standing right next to her, glaring at her angrily.

  “Jesus, how do you do that?” she said, completely rattled.

  He reached into her pocket and pulled out the lighter. Crayon grinned at him sheepishly.

  “Oops. Where’d that come from?”

  She was busted and she knew it, and her quirky charms weren’t going to get her out of this one. Rex was furious.

  “Really? So you’re a thief on top of everything else? It’s time for you to leave.”

  “But it’s pouring outside.”

  “Get out. Right now.”

  He pulled her across the room, but she wriggled free short of the door.

  “Wait, wait. Look, mister, I’m really sorry. You came to my rescue twice now, and I do a shitty thing like that. Please don’t send me away. I have nowhere else to go.”

  “Call your parents. There’s a phone booth across the street.”

  He grabbed her arm again and opened the door.

  “Wait! What about my clothes?”

  “I’ll mail them to you.”

  “Wait, please! You can’t send me home because I don’t have one! I’m an orphan.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “It’s true. My parents were killed by… by…”

  She stammered, desperately searching for the right combination of words that woul
d win him over. Then she saw a copy of The National Alarmist atop a pile of newspapers close to the door. The headline read: WEREWOLVES ATE MY FAMILY, and showed a photo of a young girl crying as a sympathetic cop held up her murdered father’s bloody shirt for the news camera.

  “…by werewolves!” she blurted out.

  Rex's eyes opened wide. He pulled her back into the apartment.

  “Werewolves, you say.”

  “Werewolves, yeah. Back in Portland… when I was twelve. They climbed through the upstairs window and killed my whole family. They would have killed me, too, except I hid under the bed.”

  Rex walked to a wall next to his desk and pulled down a world map attached to the ceiling. It was color-coded by variety of monster and its known habitats.

  “You saw these werewolves yourself? What color were they?”

  “Um, silver-colored.”

  He looked puzzled. “Strange. Silver werewolves are usually found in Tibet. Are you sure they weren't brown?”

  “Well, kinda silverish-brown, you know? Mostly brown, I guess.”

  He turned back to the map, and then slammed his fist against the wall.

  “Dammit! I thought we cleared out that area ten years ago. Somebody must have carried the curse back into the state.”

  Rex pulled Crayon over to the couch and sat her down.

  “Sit here. I've got to make some notes.”

  “Okay.”

  “Don't leave.”

  “I won't,” she said, trying to suppress a grin.

  He moved to his desk and began scribbling notes on a yellow legal pad. He looked back at the map, clearly distressed by this turn of events, and then scribbled some more.

  As Crayon watched Rex fret over this business, she began to feel very guilty about lying to him, but knew it would only upset him more if she fessed up. She looked around the apartment, wondering what penance she could perform to help him out.

  She noticed his coat on the chair, and the sleeve torn in his fight to save her from the Aldente Clan. Grabbing her purse, she pulled out a small sewing kit, and started to repair the sleeve.