Max Rage: Twelve Punches To Mars!

by Jake Bible

  “Max?” Altra whispered in Rage’s ear.

  He didn’t remember falling asleep.

  “Mmmm, yeah…?” Rage mumbled.

  “My friends are all set to meet you tonight,” Altra said, her voice so soothing. “They are very excited. As am I. We have been waiting for you.”

  “You have? That’s nice,” Rage whispered. “Nice, naked spider ladies. Rage is gonna get his spider lady orgy on… Mmmm…”

  “Yes, Max, keeping thinking that. Now sleep. We need you at full power.”

  “Damn right…”

  Rage woke with a start. He sat up in bed and reached for Altra. Everything was wrong. He could smell the wrongness.

  His eyes shot open and he looked about. Rage was no longer in the bedroom.

  “Well, shit fuck,” he said.

  Rage was strapped to a cross. Not the Jesus kind, but the original Roman kind. A huge X with his arms and legs spread eagle. Whatever room he was in was lit by a large fire set against an earthen wall. It was a large room and there was the distinct smell of hops and barley. Beer.

  But that wasn’t what woke Rage.

  The smell of fresh blood did.

  Rage turned his head to see some human Scorcher up on a similar cross and being bled from his femoral artery. The Scorcher’s eyes were glassy and unfocused. He wasn’t dead; Rage could see his chest moving, but the guy was close.

  Rage turned the other direction and saw another cross, another Scorcher, and more bleeding. But the second Scorcher was very much dead. Rage knew that look anywhere.

  A quick scan and Rage could see by the tables, the mugs of beers on the tables, and the naked spider ladies drinking and singing, that he was in Altra’s beer hall and was meeting her friends just like she said he would. Wasn’t exactly what he was expecting, but then he had little experience with naked spider lady beer halls.

  “Hey there,” Rage called out. “Um, whatcha guys doing?”

  “Oh, Max, you are awake,” Altra said. She came in close, moving between the two spider ladies doing the Scorcher bleeding. “I am glad we can talk before your sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice? Right. Sacrifice,” Rage said. “I should have known. Guy thinks he’s gonna be able to drink a ton of beer and have himself a naked spider lady orgy and that guy is dreaming. It was a nice dream.” Rage studied the others and realized that many were a hundred times more beautiful than Altra. Altra had really undersold her friends. “A really fucking nice dream. Oh, well.”

  “I am sorry to disappoint you, but we need a powerful sacrifice to appease our gods,” Altra said. “As soon as I heard you were on Mars, I knew you were the perfect candidate. The Max Rage. Our gods will not only be appeased, but they will bestow upon us great gifts and powers.”

  “Listen, Altra, baby, you don’t need gods to bestow powers on you,” Rage said. “You have four amazing tits and holes that put any female in the universe to shame. Really. I’ve had a lot of sex. I mean a lot of sex. We’re talking impossible to count amounts of sex. You are up there in the top ten, for sure. Maybe top five. Coming from me that is saying something.”

  “I am flattered you say so, Max,” Altra replied. “And I knew you were a great and powerful lover or I wouldn’t have chosen you. Your legend precedes you. I am surprised your woman on Earth ever lets you leave.”

  “You know what? Me too,” Rage said. “And speaking of my woman on Earth, you should probably let me go. Mascholine is open-minded, but if she gets jealous, then there will be serious hell to pay. You are really lovely and I’d hate for her to mess up that face and bod of yours. Trust me, she’ll cut ya until you scream for mercy.”

  “You’ll be screaming for mercy, stud,” one of the bleeder naked spider ladies said. The other laughed and nodded.

  “Stud. I like that,” Rage said. “You care to see me prove it? Untie my hands and I’ll show you what a stud I am. I mean, look at you.” Rage glanced down between his legs. “See. Even captured and told I’m about to be a sacrifice, my body is responding.”

  The naked spider lady stopped her work and looked Rage up and down.

  “It’s tempting,” she said. “But Altra was chosen to anoint you, not I. You have already been drained of seed and that is being used to call the gods to us now so they may witness the sacrifice.”

  “Well, it was worth a shot,” Rage said. “I tried to be nice. Guess that time is over.”

  Rage strained at his bonds, but they did not budge. He strained some more and only managed to tighten the ropes.

  “Masra is an expert at tying knots,” Altra said.

  “I love knots!” a naked spider lady at one of the tables shouted.

  There were many beer mugs raised and clinked in response.

  “Altra, you really need to let me go,” Rage said. “My friends will find me. They are very skilled killers. If they come down here and see you doing this, then you are all dead.”

  “Oh, Max, your friends are quite occupied up top fighting for their lives,” Altra said. “They have forgotten all about you and are only trying to get to their ship and leave. We have eyes everywhere and see all that happens above.”

  “Yeah we do!” a different naked spider lady shouted. Once again, beer mugs were raised and clinked.

  “I spy with my four eyes Max Rage’s winky!” another naked spider lady shouted.

  “It’s so fucking big it’s hard to miss!”

  “It’s so fucking big AND so fucking hard!”

  “Oh, foul language!” Altra shouted. “Ladies! Comport yourselves or we will offend the gods.” She licked her lips. “It is rather hard though. Hmm…” She shook her head. “No. He is for the gods now. Calm down, ladies!”

  The raucous atmosphere calmed down a little. A little.

  “Max,” Altra said. “You must understand that this is the highest of honors. I truly mean that. You would not have been chosen if you were not worthy. Some gratitude would be appreciated. Did I not please you earlier?”

  “Ooooooooooooo,” the fairly drunk naked spider ladies called out.

  “Yeah, Altra, you pleased the hell out of me,” Rage said. “And I pleased you. It was mutual.” He shook his bound hands. “This? Not so mutual. Do yourself and your naked spider lady friends a huge favor and let me go.”

  Altra frowned. “You speak as if you are confident of your escape.”

  “Yeah, because I am confident of my fucking escape,” Rage replied.

  “But, even if you were to somehow manage to get free of the ropes, and did not die from blood loss, how could you get past all of us?” Altra asked. She looked honestly interested in the answer.

  “Blood loss?” Rage looked down and saw that he’d already been cut and was bleeding from his thigh. Rage sighed. Idiots. He’d heal. “Because I’m Max Rage. I always escape. I always live. I’m a winner that way, lady. A goddamn winner.”

  “Did he say wiener?” a naked spider lady asked.

  “I call dibs!” another shouted.

  “Huh? Dibs?” Rage exclaimed. “Oh, come on! You’re gonna cut my dick off? So not cool!”

  “Who said anything about cutting?” the dibs naked spider lady said and gnashed her teeth.

  “Enough,” Altra said quietly. Almost too quietly for Rage to hear.

  But the naked spider ladies heard and they went silent.

  “It is now time to call our gods!” Altra announced. She raised her four arms above her head and waited. And waited. “Will someone dim the lights, please?”

  “Sorry! I thought Nacra was doing it!”

  “I did it last century!”

  “I said sorry!”

  “Ladies!” Altra scolded.

  She cleared her throat as the lights dimmed.

  “Oh, Lord and Lady Stardust! We have a sacrifice worthy of you! Please appear and bestow upon us gifts and powers!”

  The lights went completely out.

  Nothing happened.

  “Uh, you guys must have forgotten to pay the power bill,”
Rage said. “Maybe assigning someone to do that instead of assigning ladies to bleed strangers and dim lights might be a good idea.”

  “SILENCE!” a voice boomed.

  A spotlight appeared in the middle of the beer hall and a man and woman, both human, both dressed in skin-tight leotards and covered in glitter, stood there, staring at Rage.

  “Hello, Max Rage,” the glittered man said. “It is time for you to die!”

  Twenty-Eight

  Rage scrunched up his face.

  Not out of concentration or fear or confusion. But in order to keep from laughing.

  He really wanted to laugh.

  “These are your gods?” Rage asked, unable to stay silent. “You do realize they’re wearing leotards and covered in glitter. I mean, look at them. That’s a lot of fucking glitter.”

  “Max, do not blaspheme our gods,” Altra scolded.

  Rage peeled his eyes off the two, uh, gods, and turned to look at Altra. All of the naked spider ladies were bowing low, their four arms spread out in supplication.

  “Listen, sugar tits,” Rage said. “These two are conning you. Look. Look at them. Gods don’t wear leotards. Why in the hell would they? Unless the point is to show off his bulge and her camel toe. Is that the point? It’s working if it is.”

  “Stop speaking,” Lady Stardust said.

  Rage stopped speaking. He tried to keep on speaking, but his mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Is a con artist capable of that?” Lord Stardust asked. “Only those who are the nazz are capable of—”

  “Wait. Hold on. Did you say nazz?” Rage asked, able to get his mouth working again. “What the fuck is nazz? That’s not a word.”

  The naked spider ladies gasped. Lord and Lady Stardust each took a step back.

  “So much power,” Lady Stardust gasped. “He fights the beer light!”

  “He fights the beer light,” the naked spider ladies echoed.

  “Beer light?” Rage scoffed. “Now you’re just saying shit to be weird. Nazz. Beer light. Jesus jumping up and down on a Boopernit’s head Christ…”

  “Tufted or not tufted?” Lord Stardust asked then shook a hand. “It does not matter. Your silence is not required for us to drain you of your life force.”

  “But a whole lot of firepower is,” Rage said. “Listen up, bulgy, that naked spider chick may have tied some really good knots—”

  “I love knots!”

  “—but the cuts in my legs have already healed and I’ve been figuring out these ropes and this cross the whole time I’ve been up here. I’m about to break free and put some serious hurt on the fucking lot of you freaks. So, and I’m being way nicer than I have to here, mainly because Altra really was great in the sack, but I’m giving you the one chance to walk away. All of you. Just walk away. And turn the fucking lights on when you leave, alright?”

  Rainbow lasers flew from Lady Stardust’s fingers and hit Rage in the chest.

  “I shall suck you of your essence!” Lady Stardust frowned. She shoved her hand forward as if that would make it more effective. “Your essence shall be mine!”

  She stopped firing the rainbow lasers and shook her hand a few times.

  “This should suck his essence,” she said.

  “Kinda tickles,” Rage said. “Is that the essence sucking?”

  “Here, my love, let me try,” Lord Stardust said and shot his own rainbow lasers from his own hand.

  “That tickles a little more,” Rage said. “Is sucking someone’s essence just code for a tickle party? Because you two have nailed it if it is. Way to tickle.”

  Lord Stardust stopped firing as well and looked at the tips of his fingers like he was looking into the barrels of five guns.

  “That should not happen,” he muttered.

  “People, listen up!” Rage shouted. “I’m Max Rage, Intergalactic Badass. Earth Corp put a lot of money into making sure I could destroy entire planets and wipe out whole civilizations, with or without a team by my side. You think your tickle rainbows are gonna take me down?”

  Rage strained and the cross groaned then exploded into a thousand pieces.

  “Think again, bitches!” Rage shouted, free of his bonds.

  “Ow! I got a splinter in my eye!” Lord Stardust screamed. “Get it out! Get it out!”

  “Well, if you’ll hold still for a second I will!” Lady Stardust snapped. “You can be such a baby sometimes!”

  “This cannot be,” Altra gasped. “How can a mere human best our gods?”

  “Jesus Christ, lady, did you not hear what I said?” Rage snarled. “I’m Max Rage, not some mere human!”

  Then he leapt at the naked spider ladies, fists curled and arms swinging.

  There was one problem with his attack: the naked spider ladies weren’t exactly wilting flowers. They each had four fists of their own and a whole lot of really sharp teeth. Not to mention they were a bit upset over Rage’s blasphemy and shaming of their gods.

  In seconds, Rage was covered in really pissed-off naked spider ladies and they were, to be blunt, kicking the shit out of him. Yes, Rage had boasted of wiping out whole civilizations, which was very true, but he’d never fought a bunch of angry, and quite drunk, naked spider ladies before.

  But, that didn’t stop Rage from trying his badass best.

  “You want some?” he shouted as he hole-punched two naked spider ladies at once.

  They shrieked and scrambled back, each holding their holes with two of their arms.

  “How about you?” Rage snarled as he pinched the closest nipples he could reach and twisted. Hard. Shrieks filled the beer hall. “Ha! Teach you to have four tits!”

  Internally, Rage thought that was kind of harsh of him. He had nothing against a lady having four tits. In fact, he’d enjoyed Altra’s a lot earlier. But he wasn’t going to admit that. He was in full-on fight mode!

  Six fists slammed into Rage’s left cheek then six fists slammed into Rage’s right cheek, sending his head whipping back and forth, over and over. Fists hit his gut, hit his chest, his back, his nose, his ears, his legs.

  Then his nuts.

  “Ooof!” Rage grunted as pain exploded in his crotch. He always wondered why Earth Corp didn’t fix that very specific weakness males had. They could have easily armored his scrotum. Easily.

  Rage collapsed into a quivering ball as blow after blow rained down on his bathing suit area. Then the kicking started. With each naked spider lady having four legs, that was a lot of kicking.

  “STOP!” Lady Stardust shouted.

  The naked spider ladies pulled back instantly and gave her room to approach Rage. She crouched down and leaned in close as Rage swallowed hard, pretty sure his testicles were lodged somewhere in his throat.

  “How do you feel now, Punisher of Pole Vaulters?” Lady Stardust asked.

  “I…?” was all Rage managed to say. Of everything he’d been called, that was really the most confusing.

  “You have wounded my love,” Lady Stardust said. “I got the splinter out, but now he’s going to have to wear sunglasses for at least a week every time we go outside. And as handsome as my love is, he has yet to find a pair of sunglasses that compliment his nose.”

  “They just don’t fit right!” Lord Stardust yelled from somewhere in the beer hall.

  “It’s true,” Lady Stardust said. She patted Rage on the cheek. “Now, what we are going to do is get you back up on that cross.”

  “The cross is splinters, bitch,” Rage said and spat bloody phlegm in her face.

  She wiped it away with grace and poise. Then punched Rage right between the eyes.

  “They have backups,” Lady Stardust said. “Don’t you, Altra?”

  “Yes, Lady Stardust,” Altra replied from out of Rage’s line of sight. Not that he could focus his eyes very well. “We have many more.”

  “See, Max Rage?” Lady Stardust said. “Tonight you will die and your essence will be mine.”

  “Mine too!” Lord Stardust called.
<
br />   Lady Stardust closed her eyes, shook her head, and took a deep breath. “Yes, love, you get some essence too. Then we will bestow gifts and powers upon our acolytes.”

  “Yay!” the naked spider ladies cheered.

  “Lift him and bind him once again!” Lady Stardust ordered.

  Rage was lifted from the floor, still in a balled-up fetal position, and carried to where a new cross was already being set up.

  “When you are drained of your essence, Max Rage,” Lady Stardust said, spreading her legs wide and planting her hands on her hips. “Then perhaps you will finally know some humility.”

  “Doubt it,” Rage gasped as he was once again spread-eagled on the cross. “Bitch.”

  He received several punches to his groin for the insult. Unfortunately, he couldn’t cover himself since his hands were already bound by the time the words escaped his lips.

  His legs were secured and Rage was helpless. So much for his big speech and tough guy escape attempt. He made a mental note to never deal with naked spider ladies ever again unless he had at least one, probably two, dual plasma, laser-guided hot rocket launching, never-empty Axis combat rifles on him. Or, to make things even easier, just to never deal with naked spider ladies ever again at all.

  That seemed like the simpler solution.

  Rage attempted to pull free of his bonds, but the naked spider ladies really doubled down on the ropes and knots. The knot chick had gone to town, that was for sure.

  “Now, Max Rage, are you ready for your end?”

  “If I say no, will you set me free?” Rage asked, his voice and ability to breathe coming back to him.

  “No,” Lady Stardust replied flatly.

  “Can I at least have a beer before you suck my essence out of me?” Rage asked. “One last beer for the condemned?”

  “Don’t, Lady Stardust,” Altra warned. “It could be a trick. Beer may give him superpowers.”

  “Who doesn’t get superpowers from beer?” Rage responded. “It’s beer.”

  There were quite a few agreeing nods from many of the naked spider ladies.

  “No beers. No last requests,” Lady Stardust said and raised her hand at Rage. Her fingertips began to glow. “And no more rainbows. This time you will get pure light straight from the creation of the universe.”