Max Rage: Twelve Punches To Mars!

by Jake Bible

  “Yeah. Gonna fuck this mess right out of my mind tonight,” she said and started to leave.

  “Hey, Mom!” Junior called.

  “Yes, my little buzzkill?” Mascholine replied.

  “Guess who that was?”

  “I don’t want to guess, Junior. Just fucking tell me.”

  “Jeff! You know, from college?”

  “No. I don’t remember a Jeff,” Mascholine said. “Can this wait, Junior?”

  “Oh, you remember him,” Junior continued. “We were in our fraternity’s a cappella mime troupe together.”

  “Did he say a cappella mime troupe?” Rage asked.

  “Don’t think about it. You’ll only hurt yourself,” Mascholine said.

  “He and the other guys are in town and they were looking for me last night,” Junior said. “What a coincidence, right?”

  Rage looked at Mascholine. Mascholine looked at Rage. They both looked at the destroyed bar.

  “Where would these old pals of yours be now?” Rage asked.

  “They’re totally on their way here again,” Junior said. “Small world, right?”

  “It’s about to get smaller,” Rage said as he cracked his knuckles.

  Three

  “Holy Terbelian slime! It really is the Killer of Kascor 9!”

  “Dude! DUDE! Look at the guy!”

  “How many aliens have you killed? Like a hundred?”

  “Bruh, he’s killed like tens of thousands! There were like, six hundred thousand corpses left on Kascor 9 alone!”

  “And he’s the Butcher of Bumbletown!”

  “Slaughterer of Sojax too, bruh!”

  “Bruh… So fucking cool…”

  “We need shots!”

  “Shots!”

  “Shots! Shots! Shots!”

  “I’m gonna shoot your fucking faces off if you goddamn douchebruhs don’t shut the fuck up,” Rage said.

  He pulled two sawed-off, double-barreled shotguns out from behind the bar. He aimed them in the general direction of the eleven idiots that stood across the bar from him. General direction was all he needed.

  “Now, which of you fucks is gonna pay for this damage?” Rage asked, moving the shotguns back and forth from one douchebruh to the other. “Or is this a process of elimination situation where last fuckhead left alive foots the bill?”

  “Whoa… He is totally insane like you said, Junior,” one of the douchebruhs said. The guy puffed out his chest. “Those things even loaded, bruh?”

  “Rage…” Mascholine warned just as Rage was about to squeeze the trigger.

  “Seriously?” Rage snapped, glancing at her. “All I need to do is call a couple Tamblerands to take care of these little bitches and no one will know.”

  “We’d know,” Mascholine said.

  She pointed at one of the douchebruhs then paused and pointed at a different one. Mascholine hesitated then went back to the first one she’d pointed at. They were so fucking hard to tell apart. All were dressed in khaki shorts (with crisp pleats down the front), bright pink or blue or yellow or green button-up short-sleeved shirts, and boat shoes (no socks, thank you very much). Some wore sunglasses on top of their perfectly quaffed hair.

  “That one’s mother is an Earth senator. That one there… No, wait, there, his father is the owner of the largest beer distributor in our solar system. That guy there is the heir to a karaoke fortune. And that one’s step-father is a talk show host.”

  “Good Morning, Jupiter!” the douchebruh crowed cheerfully. “It’s syndicated in seven galaxies.”

  “Good Morning, Jupiter, huh?” Rage asked.

  “Yeah, bruh,” the douchebruh replied. “I can totally get you tix if you want to see the show live.”

  “Totally worth it,” another douchebruh said.

  “For sure,” a third agreed. “Best swag bags in the galaxy.”

  “No way, bruh,” a fourth piped up. “Nicky Dong’s Murder Party and Boat Cavalcade is the best.”

  “Oooo, he’s got ya there, bruh,” a fifth agreed.

  The rest nodded their heads.

  “I don’t know about that, bruh,” the one with the step-father host responded. “Nicky Dong has gotten so clichéd. I mean, yeah, the boats are great, but the murders have gotten stale.”

  “So have your step-dad’s guests, bruh,” the fifth douchebruh replied.

  “I’m not talking about the shows, dillnerds,” the fourth said. “I’m talking about the swag bags.”

  “Whoa!’

  “Hold on there, bruh!”

  “Who you calling a dillnerd?”

  “Over the line, bruh.”

  “Yeah, bruh.”

  “Totally, bruh.”

  “Hold up, bruhs. Bruh is right,” step-dad douchebruh said. “Not cool calling us dillnerds, but I get what he’s saying. Yeah, the swag bags are better with Nicky Dong. I told my step-dad last month and he agreed. Sure, the guy slapped me until I was unconscious first, but he agreed when I woke up. And gave me a new hover car so I wouldn’t tell my mom.”

  “Stop talking,” Rage muttered.

  “Junior! Bruh! We should totally all stay over tonight!” a sixth douchebruh said. “We could turn it into a cleaning party!”

  “Yeah! With strippers!” a seventh said.

  “I mean it,” Rage said quietly. “Stop.”

  “Alien strippers so we don’t know what’s under the clothes when they take them off!” an eighth added.

  “Bruh, they wouldn’t be stripping while cleaning,” a ninth said. “They’d be naked the whole time. No surprise there.”

  “I got a hookup,” a tenth said. “I can get them wholesale. And there’s no deposit if any of them die, which they will.”

  “Oh, for sure, some will die,” sixth said.

  “Shut the fuck up,” Rage snarled, his teeth gritted.

  “Strippers always be dying, bruh,” fifth said.

  “Yeah, so if any die, then we don’t have to pay for them,” tenth continued.

  “All of you shut up!” Rage shouted then fired twice up into the air.

  A good-sized chunk of ceiling fell on his head.

  The douchebruhs burst out laughing, all talking over each other, as they pointed and hopped from foot to foot like they all had to pee.

  “I’m not cleaning that up,” Rage said.

  “How about you and I head upstairs to your apartment and let the boys start cleaning on their own?” Mascholine suggested.

  Rage was shaking with pure…rage.

  “How about I kill them all like I want to do?” Rage replied.

  “Calm down, Rage,” Junior scoffed. “We’ll clean it all up. Right, bruhs?”

  “Can we have strippers?”

  “Will there be pancakes in the morning?”

  “I want whipped cream!”

  “On the strippers or the pancakes?”

  “Strippers, bruh. I don’t eat pancakes. Waffle guy here.”

  “Can they stay over, Mom?” Junior asked. “Can they? Huh?”

  “If all this shit is cleaned up by the morning and your friends pay for any leftover damage,” Mascholine said.

  “Yes!” Junior said and pumped a fist in the air. “You get to stay over, bruhs! And we get to have strippers clean up for us!”

  “I’m not paying for the strippers,” Mascholine said.

  “No way we’d let you, Mrs. Junior,” first douchebruh said. “That’s not classy.”

  “I appreciate that,” Mascholine said, tugging at Rage’s arm. She couldn’t budge him even a millimeter. “Rage? Coming?”

  “No,” Rage said.

  “You will be in a few minutes if you go upstairs with me,” Mascholine said.

  “OOOOOOOOOOOOO!” all the douchebruhs called in unison.

  Except Junior. He frowned and lowered the fist he still had raised.

  “Rage is gonna get laid!’

  “Getting him some of that fine MILF ass!”

  “Yellow tail, am I right?”
>
  “Because she’s yellow!”

  “Totally, bruh!”

  “Not cool, bruhs,” Junior said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Rage growled. “Mascholine? You’re gonna leave these idiots down here unsupervised?”

  “Not like they can break the place any more than they already have,” Mascholine replied as the douchebruhs continued to comment on Rage and Mascholine’s sex life. “Speaking of…”

  Mascholine picked up one of the buckets containing the bot.

  “Bot repair should be here any minute,” Mascholine said. “You are paying for it. Understood?”

  “You’re repairing that thing?”

  “Why not buy a new one?”

  “Yeah, my uncle can get you a sweet deal, Mrs. Junior.”

  “That bot was older than my grandma and she was here during the Long Flight of the Sky Crabs.”

  “Bruh! I watched a doc on that last week!”

  “Sky crabs, bruh. They give me the heebies.”

  “And the jeebies, bruh.”

  “Totally the jeebies too, bruh.”

  “I could shoot them all and we could just burn the place to the ground,” Rage suggested.

  “No, Rage,” Mascholine said.

  “Hey, where’s the Clickelack dude?” the fifth douchebruh asked. “That guy was awesome! He totally knew how to party!”

  “Yeah! Where is that purple bruh, bruh?”

  “We didn’t kill him, did we?”

  “Bruh, that’d be like the third Clickelack we killed this month if that’s true.”

  “Bummer, bruh.”

  “Clickelacks are supposed to be more resilient, bruh.”

  Mascholine pulled Rage to the stairwell and dragged him up to the apartment as the douchebruhs continued to go on about their unfortunate Clickelack homicides.

  “I really think we should kill them all,” Rage insisted as they reached his apartment door. “I’m telling you, Mascholine, I know some very efficient Tamblerands.”

  “No flesh-eating beetles, Rage,” Mascholine said. “The only flesh getting eaten is between my legs by you. Right fucking now.”

  Mascholine kicked open Rage’s door. He picked her up, carried her inside, and tossed her onto the bed, slamming the door shut behind them and blocking out the faint sounds of douchebruh babble from below.

  Four

  The sweat was dripping off of Mascholine’s body as she stretched and stood up, heading to the small kitchenette area of Rage’s studio apartment. Her very firm ass swung back and forth playfully as Rage lay upon his bed and watched her walk away.

  “You watching closely?” Mascholine asked as she reached the fridge, opened the door, and bent over.

  “You know I can’t take my eyes off that,” Rage said with a laugh.

  There was a crash from below and he growled.

  “And I had taken my mind off that shit down there, but now I think I should go check on the little shits,” Rage said.

  He started to swing his legs over the side of the bed, but Mascholine turned and cocked a hip. She held a can of beer in one hand and rubbed the cold can against her breasts.

  “Or I can check on them later,” Rage said and lay back down. “Get over here.”

  Mascholine strutted her way back to the bed, placing the cold can in and on various places of her body as she put one foot slowly in front of the other, drawing out the antici—

  “Hey, Mom!” Junior yelled from the other side of Rage’s door. “Can I go to Mars with the guys?”

  Rage rolled his eyes then looked at his crotch. The deflation was instant and immediate.

  “No, you don’t,” Mascholine whispered as she threw the beer to Rage. “You keep him happy and ready.” She threw on a short robe and walked to the door. “I’ll be right back.”

  Mascholine yanked open the apartment door as Rage popped open the can of beer. She closed the door behind her and Rage didn’t bother trying to eavesdrop even though he could have ratcheted up his genetically superior hearing and listened to every word they said. He finished the beer, belched, crushed the can into a flat disc with one hand, tossed the disc across the room, then stood up to go get more beer.

  The apartment door opened as Rage finished another beer and was grabbing a third out of the fridge.

  “Shower,” Mascholine said and dropped her robe as she walked to the small bathroom. “Now.”

  Rage brought the beer with him. Mascholine already had the water running hot and the bathroom was steaming up by the time Rage hopped in the shower with her. He opened the beer and gave it to Mascholine. She downed it in three gulps then got to her knees and gulped something else.

  When she was finished, Rage switched positions and went to work until Mascholine was screaming and pounding her fists against the shower walls.

  She yanked him up onto his feet and he in turn lifted her into the air. She wrapped her legs around his waist and they went at it for a good thirty minutes until a few of the shower tiles began to crack and fall onto the drain.

  Then they actually showered, got out, struggled to dry off in the cramped space, and went back into the kitchenette for more beers.

  “So,” Mascholine said. “You’re probably wondering about Junior going to Mars.”

  “Nope,” Rage said, leaning against the counter, his eyes locked onto Mascholine’s glowing yellow skin.

  She snapped her fingers in front of his face and he blinked, smiled, then looked her in the eyes.

  “You should be wondering,” Mascholine said. “Because you’re going with them.”

  Rage froze, the beer can that was about to meet his lips stopping midair. Beer dribbled from the can’s mouth until Mascholine reached out and took it from Rage’s hand.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” Mascholine said. “It’s a paying gig.”

  “No way,” Rage said. “There is nothing you can do or say to get me to agree to this. No fucking way.”

  “Nothing I can do?” Mascholine said, a sly smile on her lips.

  “Nothing,” Rage said. “Not even sex stuff.”

  “You know, Rage, I am your boss,” Mascholine said. “I could fire you if you don’t do this.”

  “And I’d sue your ass,” Rage said.

  Mascholine laughed. Hard.

  “Shut up,” Rage said and held out a hand. “Give me another beer.”

  Mascholine managed to grab him another beer and hand it to him without dropping it, despite her continued laughter.

  “You can stop now,” Rage said. “Seriously.”

  “You’re unemployable, Rage,” Mascholine said once she’d calmed down. “Earth Corp has made you persona non grata. And the Greenville PD has put out the word that you aren’t to be hired by anyone within a thirty-thousand-mile radius because of that crap with Lisha Peem.”

  “Greenville PD and Earth Corp just want me to do their dirty work for them when they come knocking at the door,” Rage said. “There are plenty of dive bars in town that’d hire me in a second.”

  “Nope,” Mascholine said with perfect confidence.

  “Uh, yep,” Rage insisted.

  “Nope,” Mascholine said. “Anyone else hires you and they lose their dive bar license. Greenville City Council passed a resolution last month.”

  “They what? Like fuck they did.”

  “It’s true. They were going to run you out of town, but I convinced them to let you stay as long as I kept tabs on you.”

  “Why the fuck did they want to run me out of town?”

  “You keep breaking billboards when you throw patrons out the front door. It’s getting expensive to repair.”

  “Then they need to make stronger billboards.”

  “Or you can throw a little softer.”

  “What’s the fucking point in that? No one learns a lesson that way.”

  “Your job isn’t to teach lessons, your job is… Doesn’t matter. You’re taking Junior and his fraternity brothers to Mars. End of story.”

  “Not en
d of story. Mars? The entire planet is one big Scorching Dude festival. That’s all that’s left of the colonies. There is no way I’m going to Mars with a bunch of douchebruhs just to watch them get more fucked up than they are now. They can stay on Earth and be drunken idiots.”

  “It’s not Scorching Dude they’re going for. Well, yeah, it is, but it’s a sub-festival of Scorching Dude.”

  “Sub-festival? What is a sub-festival? They have those?”

  “They do. This one is the Intergalactic A Cappella Mime Troupe Festival. Junior and those guys were Earth champions three years running. They put all the other frats to shame. They’re kind of a legend at Omicron Omicron Omicron. Apparently, the fraternity is renting an entire section of the boulevard for current and former members. They want to represent this year hard.”

  Rage’s jaw dropped. Mascholine had to reach out and shut it for him before drool spilled out over his lower lip.

  He cleared his throat, shook his head to get his mind right, then asked, “I’m sorry… But, a cappella mime troupes are real? That’s a real thing? An a cappella mime troupe??”

  “Yes.”

  “A cappella?”

  “Yes.”

  “Mime troupe?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Rage. A cappella mime troupe. They’re a huge deal. How do you not know this?”

  “Because I don’t have my head jammed up my ass. What do you mean how can I not know this? How would I know this? I’m the guy that’s wiped out entire alien races. Why would I possibly be interested in the goings on of frats? Let alone one called Omicron Omicron Omicron. And mimes are fucking silent! How can they be a cappella too?”

  “A cappella means without accompaniment. They don’t use a soundtrack like other mime troupes do when interpreting songs.”

  Rage’s jaw began to open again, but Mascholine got to it in time and closed it before it could fully drop.

  “You’re fucking with me,” Rage said. “You’re all fucking with me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Yep.”

  “Nope.

  “Jesus fucking Christ…”

  “Sounds like they leave in two days,” Mascholine said.

  “You’re coming with, right?” Rage asked.