*****
No longer being the main navigator, Ikonor was apparently now my personal trainer. He presented me with the sparest of small utility apartments, where everything was completely within reach, and all was systematically appealing to the senses. My refrigerator was waist-high, like I was back at college. The stark-white walls, however, were weirdly clean of artwork, or any other adornments or ornamentations.
Just as I reached out to touch what looked like an old black telephone from the late 1800’s, it rang, and I picked it up. Ikonor said all of my preliminary training had been performed in advance, and coughed loudly into the receiver. Instantly, the entire wall in front of me parted neatly like the Red Sea, and I saw all that I ever needed to know or do displayed on a wide screen, with full surround sound.
It was stupendous, awesome, a terrifyingly prolonged Drama of War, a brutal conflict stretching into its frozen, lingering totality.
Much to my surprise, instead of packing me off to boot camp, Ikonor, now the Kel Commander, handed me a huge ray rifle and put me immediately on the front lines of yet another planet. It was barren and deserted, full of the vast unknown. I looked wildly about for mercy, saw none anywhere, and randomly shot my first “Being of Vast Importance.” The Red Sea merely parted again; he sprawled in meaty profusions at my very feet, one pile of very exploded lizard dung.
Each morning was new, each day was a Drag. We were all herded into the humungous flying space buses in vast multitudes, to fight this weird race of 15-foot reptilians; they were seemingly the most subhuman monsters, the kind with a choice which “we” Kels could never have. Our Yahway-given duty was to fight and die while attracting the other Kels, or so I figured. Both sides at first seemed to be grotesque demons straight from the nether bowels of Hell; but then I noticed only one side was scaly all over, like idiotic mini-dragons, with radiation-emitting eyes that could blind one permanently.
These malevolent creatures could only cause utter despair and hideous circumstances wherever they sojourned. I could not feel sorry for them. I couldn’t ever see things their way. They were sheer, raw, unmitigated evil. Our incredible and eternal job was to destroy them all, before they destroyed all of us.
The ugly lizards fought stupidly but fiercely, using their laser rifles, supplied by Yahway-Knows Who Else, to poison our eyes mostly. Every night was fit for laughs about your life, for the terrible lizards even possessed invisibility suits. How could we ever win? How could I even so much as live another day?
I often checked for foot and tail prints, to see if Dracs were around. Most of my time was spent out in the open without shelter, either getting rained on, or being broiled like an Arcturian lobster under the wretchedly dry and consuming vast summer sun of the awesomely desert planet Tory’s war zones. For this is where we fought our battles, in a mutually agreed-upon No Man’s Land.
Howsoever, the race of Kels always treated me as one of their own kind. Every moment with them was nice, complete, and alluring. I was always their total equal. I swore to give my life solely for them. They made me feel I was home, unlike the elder planet Earth, where people knew I was nothing but shit. I was happy to risk my life, even my afterlife, for all of them!
I began learning to speak Kellian, a very elaborate language, similar in style to ancient Sanskrit, with great difficulty. Most of the Kels just used English with me, or something very like it. The vast majority of my time was spent avoiding death and trying to bring it to the Dracs. Once I had bagged three of these monsters, the Kel Supreme Commander, Traxis the Great, held a conference with my Kel superiors. Thanks to Ikonor, now a dear friend, whose life I had saved on more than one occasion, a major decision was made regarding my circumstances. Although technically I was supposed to have killed ten Dracs and to have spent one hazardous year on the front lines, probably to be killed while fighting, Ikonor had discussed my especially alienated selflessness and attainments with our High Command. It was decided to give me my dues, a good, faithful wife and a brief time off, quite a ways ahead of schedule.
My daredevil attitude, where I would bravely scream aloud to attract all available Kels to my side, helping us kill more Dracs with sheer teamwork, had attracted this special attention. The High Command would give me an actual person, a wife, and a small newlywed’s two-bedroom apartment; my dreams of ecstatic pleasure had come true!
It was incredible to me that I would be receiving a life-long partner in the same way that my Dad had given me a puppy dog when I was a kid. What about her feelings, I wondered vaguely to myself; for I did not want to lose this opportunity to mate with the sophisticated, sociable, and highly moral race of Kels. Surely, this was the epitome of a short life and a gorily circumspect death, serving a worthwhile society even if only briefly, gratefully breeding new warriors for this tremendously important struggle between our radically different two empires. I could only imagine what a vastly superior beauty my wife would turn out to be, and dreamed of her every single day I fought. And I finally managed to kill my ten Dracs, right on schedule.
Woody Allen Makes A Scary Sandwich - Horror Pastiche, Stories & Poems Page 5