by Brandon Getz
“One world is sometimes enough,” she said.
He snorted, and his stomach growled. The dust was getting to him, and he was still wicked hungry. The princess’s hand hadn’t been much of a snack. He called for Fish, who was sucking on a genie bottle of glowing liquid. “Time to rock and roll. Wormhole train’s leaving the transdimensional station.”
Reluctantly, Fish handed the bottle back to Frank and started making his way across the desolation. The big tree took a swig with his drinking appendage. Then, with significant creaking, he lifted himself off the rubble. Still carrying the jug, he lumbered toward them, dragging a few feet behind the cyborg amphibian.
“Hey, Frank,” Lars said. “Sure you want to stick around this rock? Still got a hell of a stash of beer back on Sheila. A keg’s got your name on it for saving my ass from those sea monsters.”
The battered tremuloid took his post behind the armored princess and straightened his posture, eyes as clear as they could be with Frank up to his sapwood in gin and juice. He looked just as he did back in the neon bar on Victor’s Halo, only a little more roughed up: ever the loyal bodyguard.
“Yeah,” Lars said, giving the tree-man a nod. “Figured as much.”
He stepped back, holding the puzzle box out like the sacred magical artifact it was. Nearby, Fish stood with his fingers steepled, goggled eyes magnified and fidgety. Lars held his breath—and tapped the surface of the box.
Nothing happened. He tapped it again, caressed it, gave it a little two-finger action. Still nada. Shaking his head, he handed it back to Jay. “You mind? I don’t know the combination to this lock.”
The princess slid her new wooden fingers across the box and blue sparks surged through the designs of its engravings. An unnatural wind picked up, blowing from everywhere at once, a thunderclap boomed, and just above the center of the crater, the breach opened: a deep black void ringed in blue lightning.
Lars took one last look over his shoulder at the world’s three white moons. He could live there, if he wanted. For a while anyway. Settle in some remote mountain town and meditate like Budge under these moons. Let them recharge his blood, get him back into balance. Howl at them now and again, when he was in the mood. With his wolf blood, the difference in cosmic vibrations didn’t seem to matter, not like it had with Jay and the Hand. In the moonlight, among the rubble, he felt good. Better than he ever had.
But what about Sheila? What about the great wide universe out there? All the crazy shit it had to offer? What about his stash of beer? One world is sometimes enough, Jay had said. For some people. Not for Lars Breaxface, Werewolf in Space.
“All right,” he said. “We’re out. But if a storm starts kicking up, just remember what ol’ Lars Breaxface does when the earth quakes and the pillars of heaven shake and some evil witch-beast tries to call down the wolfpocalypse.”
Jay smiled again. “And what’s that?”
“I’ll tell you next time,” Lars said, and stepped through the portal.
Chapter LXII
The world between worlds was calm. The scent of burnt yams was still in the air. Crickets fiddled their nighttime rags. Stars danced their disco in the sky. The trail to Budge’s campfire was well worn, just as he remembered it, big crescent divots of hoofprints beaten into the dirt. He had to tell Budge he’d done it—he’d stopped Ragnarok, with a little help here and there. The old bull-headed bastard wouldn’t believe it. Budge tended to get a bug up his ass about prophecies, thought they always found their way of coming true. Fate finds a way, the old monk would say. Lars didn’t believe that shit for a second.
When Lars reached the minotaur’s fire ring, though, there was no Budge. The ashes were white and long cold.
“Fuck it,” he said out loud. Whether it was a trick of netherspace or some cryptic lesson from the real, magical, dimensionally ambiguous Budge, he didn’t know. He kept on walking, steering wide around the spot where the monk had pelvic-thrusted him over the cliffside. As the wolfman strolled butt-naked and whistling down the mountain trail of the forest moon, everything around him faded slowly to black—everything but the stars.
Chapter LXIII
Beyond the breach, they tumbled into chaos and explosions. Lars tripped out of the portal first, a clumsy Fish collapsing onto him. The wolfman howled as the amphibian’s metal angles dug into his exposed fleshy parts. Fish muttered his apologies.
Around them, the Library was still booming. They were right back where Lars and crew had crossed over to the vampire dimension, more or less. The breach hadn’t reopened in the temple’s cat-infested reading room where Jay had first unlocked the box and sent them all down the rabbit hole. Instead it’d dropped them outside the collapsing temple, about halfway back through the stacks toward the landing port, where Sheila was gassed up and ready to rocket.
“What the hell is happening here?” Fish screeched.
Only moments had passed, Lars realized. Somewhere in that temple, Boris was exploding, the witch’s last victim. He’d been in the vampire universe for almost a day, but here it’d been a matter of seconds. The witch had said time worked differently in the pocketverse. Even now, Jay must’ve been days and weeks into her new life, whatever life looked like in the aftermath of Handzilla’s rampage.
“We pissed off some Librarians.”
“Librarians?”
They were jostled by the crowds—aliens of a thousand shapes fleeing the imploding temple. The cyber-mummy custodians of the City of Books darted overhead on paper wings, all of them heading the other way. They didn’t give the naked, human Lars a second glance. If they were looking for him at all, they were looking for the wolf.
“C’mon,” he said. “My cruiser’s in the parking lot. Let’s lift off this dive.”
Fish didn’t hesitate. He soared behind Lars on his sword wings as the naked wolfman pushed through the panicked crowds, dodging toppled food carts and the occasional burning book. The vial of negativium bounced against his chest on its monster thread.
As the crowds trampled book after book, Fish shook his head and muttered, “A travesty.”
“They’ll print new ones,” Lars barked, elbowing a squid-faced woman out of his way. “Now haul ass.”
Sheila was right where he’d left her. He caressed the flames painted across her nose, looped his fingers along the six graffiti letters of her name, and laid a deep, heartfelt kiss on the bare spray-painted titties of the eponymous brunette on the fuselage. Then he fiddled in nethers of the cruiser’s undercarriage and until he felt a pelt of soft fur. He tugged on it, and when his hand reappeared, it held a dirty pink rabbit’s foot keychain, from which hung his spare set of keys.
The lock clicked, and the hatch to the cargo hold opened. He was home.
He sucked in the smells of it—stale beer, old socks, unidentifiable fast food remains. Everything just as he’d left it. His crates of canned meat, the big strapped-down bags of Fish’s Rubber Room weapons cache, and of course, the rack of beer kegs. Lars knelt under the tapped keg, yanked the lever, and out poured the hopped nectar of the gods directly into his mouth. Foam frothed over his beard and down his chest, but he didn’t give a fuck. He guzzled ale till
he choked, spit it out, and guzzled some more. For one sweet gulping moment, he was in frothy paradise. All the dude ever wanted was his beer back.
“Lars?” Fish was looking at him like he’d caught him fucking a floating eyeball. Dull explosions boomed outside, and the space cruiser rocked.
The wolfman stood up, body hair glistening with spilled beer. “Grab a seat,” he said. “And hold onto something. No telling what these Librarians will do with their sacred temple tumbling down.”
“Wait,” said Fish. “Where are we going?”
“Fuck if I know, man. Universe is my oyster. Where do you want me to drop you?”
Fish slumped against a shipping crate. With his wings sheathed and his mechanical arm in hand mode, he didn’t look so much like an amphibian avenging
angel. He looked like a guy who’d lost both legs and an arm in a shitty accident. “Well,” he said, “you’ve destroyed my life twice now. I have nothing and no one, not even those last few prototypes. They got lost in the portal somehow. I have nowhere in the whole universe to call home.”
“Shit, Fishman,” Lars said, pausing at the corridor to the cockpit. Fish had a point: Jay’s mission had obliterated the amphibian’s world once, then did it all over again in another universe, and Lars had been right there tearing it up with her. He thought of all those long hauls in the black alone, the ultimate lone wolf. Fuck good was a lone wolf if he, say, got his ass stuck atop a pyramid or eaten to death by a giant monster? “You got a home, Fish—you’re looking at it. Room enough for two if you don’t mind sleeping in the hold.”
Fish grinned. “Not at all.”
On the way past his bunk, Lars nabbed a pair of patched-up fatigues from a pile of stale laundry on the floor. He took a whiff, and they passed the sniff test, or close enough. He yanked them up, going commando and not even bothering to buckle the fly.
In the cruiser’s old, familiar cockpit, he nestled his ass into the carefully cultivated divot of the pilot seat and shoved the keys into the ignition, the sound system’s speakers roaring with the booming sound of a revving ‘67 Impala. Holographic displays raised in overlay across the control board, and his fingertips tapped with instinct, acting on muscle memory even before he could think. In seconds, the engines were fired up, and victorious fucking death metal was raging from the stereo.
Sheila lifted off the landing pad. Engines flared, and the old cruiser blasted into orbit and beyond, into a field of real, shimmering stars stretching halfway to infinity and back again, leaving the cube-shaped Library planet in her quantum wake.
On the navigational bits of his holo-display, Lars tapped the coordinates for Freewheel. Seemed like as good a place as any to start. A thousand and one places to get fed, fucked, and drunk, and once he fenced a bit of the neg around his neck, he’d be the casino world’s high roller numero uno. Werewolf VIP. He engaged the futtle drive, and stars streaked by the windows in long white lines as Sheila zoomed into subspace. Nodding his head to the thrashing double-bass, he leaned back, punched the big red button for auto-pilot, and settled in to watch the psychedelic rainbow of subspace rushing by. Color melted into color, and the craziness of the whole batshit adventure, from Pickled Quasar to monster battle, stripped away with every passing lightyear. He felt all right. Better than all right. He’d helped save the world, and held himself back from full-blown werewolf berserker mode. No Dys-7 repeat, not on the vampire planet or ever again. He’d tamed the beast. And now he was home sweet home, with a fortune in negativium, a weapons cache to outfit a small army, a new friend with a knack for guns and fucktoys, and a cozy pair of pants, the universe—his universe—speeding past him, kaleidoscopic and infinite.
All he needed now was another beer.
Lars and Fish will return in:
Lars Breaxface
and the Starkiller Unicorn
Acknowledgements
Too many people to thank, and I’m gonna feel like an ass if I forget anybody. But I’ll try. First, I have to thank Greg Leunig for getting on my case to write something for the now-defunct JukePop Serials (RIP) for like two years. Thanks also to the motley crew of Breaxface fans who read and voted on JukePop and kept me chugging along chapter by chapter. A humungo-gigantor thank you to all the artists who contributed work to this project, especially to Jonas, who started it all off with his amazing cover art of the titular hero in his porn-bedazzled cockpit. To my main beta readers, Jason Peck and Nic Eaton, thanks for the feedback and for catching shit that I didn’t. To Nate and Shaunn at Spaceboy Books, a wolfzilla-sized thanks—Nate’s excellent edits and rad design work helped to make the book you hold in your hands. And lastly, thank you to my partner, Hillary, who supported this nonsense the whole way and who told me to submit this story to Spaceboy and unleash the space werewolf on the world. Cheers.
About the Author
Brandon Getz earned an MFA in fiction writing from Eastern Washington University. His work has appeared in F(r)iction, Versal, Flapperhouse, and elsewhere. Lars Breaxface: Werewolf in Space is his first novel. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA.
About the Artists
Jonas Goonface is a friendly ghost that haunts coffee shops and draws comics about cannibals and space samurai and Satan and stuff. He recently collaborated on Godshaper with Simon Spurrier for BOOM! Studios.
His work can be found at http://jonasgoonface.tumblr.com
Brian Price is an artist and graphic designer in the orbit of Pittsburgh who stays up half the night drawing like a madman. He is currently working on two graphic novel projects: a paranormal detective comedy and a historical superhero tale starring an escaped slave dressed as the devil protecting the Underground Railroad. Follow him on Instagram @brian_price_
Melissa Ciccocioppo is an artist residing in Pittsburgh, PA. She graduated from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh with an Associate’s degree in graphic design. Soon after graduating, she picked up her first bar of polymer clay and was immediately hooked. She decided to keep her full-time job at the wacky local coffee shop to pursue her new love for sculpting and created Bambi’s Clay Design. Her specialty is fun, colorful jewelry and small sculptures of animals and other made up creatures. She loves taking commissions, so don’t hesitate to contact her with a custom order!
Shop: www.bambisclaydesign.etsy.com
Facebook: Bambi’s Clay Design
Instagram: @industrialbambi
Megan Shalonis is a Pittsburgh artist known for her stylized paintings of houses, campers, and flying saucers. She also curates monthly art showings at the Bloomfield Crazy Mocha coffee shop. Find her on Instagram at @megalons and purchase work at
https://meganshalonis.bigcartel.com
Kate J. Reed is often a writer and sometimes a drawer. She is always a reader, a mom, and a partner. She has published short stories in Copper Nickel and Literati and co-edited the Railtown Almanac: A Spokane Prose Anthology for Sage Hill Press. She’s pretty excited to be in this badass book!
Ryan Yee has created work for properties like Pathfinder, Star Wars, and Lord of the Rings. He has also been working with Wizards of the Coast on Magic: The Gathering since 2009. He has now been featured in the galleries and illustration annuals he loved staring at as a kid. He currently lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and works as a lead concept artist for Schell Games, where he continues to draw and create worlds fifteen-year-old Ryan once dreamed about.
More at www.ryanyee.com
Kim Piper (Twitter: @penandpiper) is an animator, artist, and writer who turns, werewolf like, into a chemist during the day. She brings characters and creatures to life using nothing but pixels, pens, and coffee. Loves: Sci-Fi, Neil Gaiman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, martial arts, and powerful stories told through any medium. Ara of the Wanderers, a pixelated RPG developed by Kim and her partner Nick Barr, is forthcoming at www.araofthewanderers.com
Ken Town is an artist pretending to have a day job. He gets his lip piercings stuck to people. His art is about navigating darkness. That’s why he usually draws cartoons. See more of Ken’s art on
Instagram: @rocketTango.
Higu Rose is a black artist and resident terror of Chicago, IL. Based in fiction and autobiography, their work focuses on experiences of being queer, isolated, and mentally ill. Their narratives are a constant endeavor to understand the self and society, with a snarling desire to
love and live. Higu is the worst kind of cool guy. Bad teeth. Don't know math, neither.
Find their stuff at www.swamp-monster.net or follow them on Twitter @higoons
Bill Homan is a New England native now living in the Pittsburgh area. A special effects artist, potter, photographer, and visual artist, he is also the longsuffering spouse of author Gwendolyn Kiste. Some of his illustrations can be found in A Shadow of Autumn: An Anthol
ogy of Fall & Halloween Tales.
Felicia Cooper is a puppeteer, dancer, actor, educator, and maker. Her work is primarily centered around illustration of movement as a language for expression and the dissection of a human compulsion to find order in chaos through narrative. She has completed artistic
residencies with Bread & Puppet Theater, The Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh, Pearl Arts Studios, and has been the recipient of a grant from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She has also worked in collaboration with the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, Harvard
University’s Project Zero, Dixon Place’s Puppet BloK!, DRAP Arts Festival, Pittsburgh Festival of Firsts, The National Puppetry Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and others.
Maggie Lynn Negrete is a feminist artist who adapts her medium in response to the dialogue she wishes to create with the audience. Her artwork consists of installations, illustrations, and prints with themes focused on women’s history, fantasy, and the occult. Uniting these mediums, Maggie’s design sense manifests through black and white linework with nods to Gilded Era illustration, the current renaissance of sign painting and is influenced by her heritage of typographers and illustrators.
Find her at www.mgglntcreates.com
Nate Taylor is a graphic designer by day, illustrator by night. Any free time that isn’t consumed by drawing monsters is spent daydreaming about Myst island.
More at www.illustratornate.com