by Alan Spencer
Juan realized he was talking to a lifeless kitchen.
His mouth hung open in horror.
The dish washer had been sent through the giant dish machine and was laying on the other side burned to death.
Not burned to death.
Melted.
The body was covered in pink popping fluids. Chemical burns. Peeled back flesh. Sizzling muscle tissue.
Juan's eyes scanned the room, and each new horror, with building dismay.
Ralph Cotton, the fattest, and the best cook on his staff, stood in front of a collection of tall boiling pots without a head. Ralph's head was bouncing around in a tall boiling pot of water.
Another cook, Mary Ellen, had her face shoved into an industrial sized meat grinder, and had half her head grinded down to pink bloody straw.
Chuck Buffett, the steak master, had his face pressed against the grill. His face was cooked black. A meat tenderizer had been slammed so hard into the back of Chuck's head the weapon stayed there, sunk into two inches of gray matter.
The youngest cook, Angie McConnell, had her face forced into a three-story cake and had suffocated to death. She had noticeably urinated in her pants during her sweet snuffing. Another cook had been working in front of a deep sink. Two pairs of legs up to the torso stood in place. The rest of him had seemingly dissolved into the overflowing sink. Water didn't fill the sink. A sizzling pink substance was boiling hard, promoting its ability to dissolve the human body.
Other cooks had been thrown into the trash, their stomachs carved out into grizzly hollows. Intestines hung from the ceiling's exposed pipes. Blood crosses were smeared on the walls in psychotic finger font.
Juan felt like the room was spinning.
The sights were so grotesque.
The pipes were making the strangest churning noises. Pressures were rising and falling within the steel tubes. Juan thought they could burst at any second.
Who had killed his staff?
Who drew those gnarly crosses?
This had happened in a matter of minutes. Who could perpetrate such atrocity so fast?
Juan grabbed a steak knife from a nearby rack. Anything, anybody, could rush out at him and take his life.
He didn't say a word.
Juan kept watch. His eyes were as wide as they could get. Dreams of Second Earth dissolved just like his assistant cook in that sink.
The pipes overhead kept grumbling and whining.
Steel was bending and expanding.
Underfoot, sections of the floor cracked. Tiles shattered. Trenches in the floor expanded, causing the floor to break away into four big sections.
Juan dodged the pots that crashed to the ground.
"Jesus! God!"
Cookery smashed to the floor. Juan did his best to stay stable and upright. He teetered, bent forward, almost did the splits, and called out for help.
The pipes above him exploded, showering the kitchen in foamy pink boiling hot liquid. Before Juan had a single drop touch him, the floor lifted him up two feet.
"Whooooooooafaaaaaaaaaahk!"
Juan had two seconds to view what was hoisting him up into the air. Once his eyes processed the sight, it was like falling down a deep hole. Lowering down into the pitch black recess, he viewed columns of enormous teeth the size of human beings.
The jaws of the great white shark bit down on Juan. He was chewed up in a cacophony of shattering bones, shredding flesh, and popping guts.
The shark swallowed him raw.
Dinner service was cancelled.
Luxury Suite
"I gave up a lot to be here," Lionel Little of Little Industries, a mega billionaire importer of fine cars, bickered. "This suite is sub-standard. Our hot tub doesn't work. The mini fridge doesn't have a decent bottle of bourbon. I might as well be drinking river swill. I paid top dollar to be here. Should've considered this a ticket on public transportation. Such offense! "I'm responsible for Globo Corps' progress. My wallet was always open to those people. When they asked for more funds, I didn't say why, or how come; I only said how much? I'm being butt-fucked here, and I don't like it. I'm Lionel Little. I make Donald Trump look like a work-a-day paperboy! I won't stand for this insult!"
The sixty-year old billionaire was trying to burn a line into the carpet with his constant pacing. He didn't notice the eighteen year old Sports Illustrated model, Tonya Black, the blonde bombshell, splayed out on the bed nude to the toes.
The bubbly would-be Michael Bay movie star invited Lionel in that bimbo, sex me up lilt, "Come to bed, Lionel. You can drink me instead. Anything you want, big man. I'm all yours. All you can handle, baby."
Lionel was unaffected by Tonya's words.
"And you know what else? Those announcements keep telling us to stay in our rooms. I didn't pay for mistakes. I paid for a good time. I don't need this aggravation. Every time I call the help desk, the phone rings and rings. Nobody answers. And forget room service. God forbid I wish to order something on this super ship piece of shit. Globo Corps. More like Globo Whore."
Tonya was pressing her double-d implants together. "It's not such a bad thing being trapped in our room together, is it?"
She tweaked her nipples, and threw her head back in delight. She chewed on the ends of her bleached blonde hair and gave him that sexy stare. Tonya knew how it transformed Mr. Little into Mr. Big. The model utilized everything in her cannon to calm her high strung mega rich husband. She posed, and was about to play with herself, when Mr. Little stormed towards the wall in a fit of rage.
"I bet the flat screen TV doesn't work. Let me turn it on, and we'll see."
Tonya screamed in horror. The TV seemed to leap off the wall. The plaster behind it exploded. A giant hammerhead shark shot forth. The shark's mouth bit Lionel on his torso. Then a wicked crunch sound. Lionel landed in two pieces on the floor. Another mouth, a lemon shark, burst through the carpet and swallowed his legs, taking the extra time to crack through those thick knee caps. Lionel's top half evaporated into the pink frothing waters that spilled into the room from the growing hole in the ceiling.
Tonya stayed glued to the bed. The levels of boiling pink waters were so high, the bed was floating. She did her best to stay on the melting island. The bed itself was beginning to disintegrate and burn. Above her horrified screams, the pipes in the ceiling groaned. They were bending, expanding, and finally bursting. A wall of twenty ravenous barracudas and mixed fish latched onto Tonya's body. The only thing left of her supple body after the devouring were her implants.
Security Force
Tom "Shrapnel" Wilson dropped everything when the lights in the security quarters glowed from white to a deep red.
WARNING. THREATS DETECTED ON EVERY LEVEL. SECURITY REQUESTED IMMEDIATELY.
The automated warning on the room's intercom had everybody going. Shrapnel didn't hesitate. He stubbed out his cigarette, threw on his riot gear, and tried not to crash to the floor. Shrapnel had shared two bottles of Jack Daniels among his twelve person crew.
"Move it, Taz. Put down that microwave burrito and get your lazy ass into gear. Our passengers need our help. Load up, and gear up."
Blazer and Reeds had been bumping uglies in the other room. One was rosy-faced, Shrapnel noticed, and the other, walked funny from the terrible affliction of blue balls.
Damn it, Shrapnel thought. These people weren't ready to fight. They thought they had an easy ride to Second Earth. No hiccups. That hypothesis was proving not to pan out at all. As Dodger, Clutch, Tiger, and Greaser changed their clothes, he could hear walls breaking, screams piercing the air, and odd sounds of things swimming and cutting through the water at high speeds.
Shrapnel would have to psych up his team to get them in the game. He noticed their best weapon, the Pathfinder 3000, hadn't been fully charged. Shrapnel took that moment to put the machine on charge and let it be. Pathfinder 3000 wouldn't be available for at least a couple of hours. It was up to him and his team to do the ass kicking today.
Shrap
nel's crew fired out of the room in under ninety seconds flat. Heavily armed, mean-faced, muscles flexed, assholes clenched, they stormed the hallway. They headed towards the elevator ready to sweep each floor, starting from bottom to top.
Jogging towards the east end of the hall to pile into the elevator, Shrapnel knew his crew needed a jolt of courage. He would be the electricity in their veins, and the calcium to thicken the bones in their spines.
"Who has big balls?"
The team chimed in, "We do, sir!"
Then their song began. Each sang with the verve of a soldier of fortune with gold in his war-torn hands and a nice piece of ass on the way.
"Oh, I got balls. You know my balls are always full. Balls for you. Balls for me. Balls of fury. Balls of lightning. Balls of brass. Balls to knock up every lass up in first class. Oh, I'll empty 'em so good. Oh, I got balls. Big ol' balls."
Before the team reached the elevator, the elevator opened by itself. The song abruptly stopped. Everybody raised their guns on the offensive.
"Stand your ground," Shrapnel said. "Shoot to kill."
Everybody from his team was lifted off of their feet. Shrapnel dove, ducked, rolled, and spun in the opposite direction of the elevator in time to avoid the strange clutching things.
Tentacles, he kept thinking. Fucking tentacles.
A squid the color of a corpse dredged from the sea slithered its way out of the elevator. Its long tentacles rippled with muscles and vascular power. Each tentacle had wrapped around his team's throats. Like ripping a tab off of a beer bottle, the tentacles squeezed his team's heads off in unison. The tentacles threw up the heads into its tiny mouth and swallowed them whole.
Shrapnel thought fast, and struggled to fight off his disbelief. The squid was gigantic, and such a nebulous, evil looking creature. He threw four grenades towards the beast, lunged forward, made the turn in the hallway, and ducked for cover.
Three BOOMS later, he heard the sick squish and splatter of guts strike the walls.
"Clear," he muttered under his breath. "Fucking clear."
Before he checked to ensure nobody else had dodged the creature like he had, the wall behind him burst into pieces. He was thrown forward, and then darkness encompassed him. The air grew extra humid. Three forced flips later, he was covered in gelatin muck that burned his skin.
No!
Shrapnel peered forward through the darkness. He was looking out the mouth of a giant shark. Then that view closed, and he was further sucked down into the shark's body. He clutched at strings, muscular cables, coils of slippery wet things, and tried to fight his way forward. He was bunched up between soft walls, as his skin sizzled and burned away.
Shrapnel screamed in agony. He was bent, twisted, squashed, and downgraded into digested puddles of red. Then he was digested.
Shrapnel and his team were no more.
Security was a thing that no longer existed on the Redeemer.
Blood Pool
Tanner Simmons sat on top of his lifeguard tower watching the hundred some-odd persons swimming in the fake ocean, sunbathing on the sand under tanning lights, or mingling at the bar decorated as a giant lily pad. Tanner wasn't really a lifeguard. He couldn't give CPR. He was simply a face to a product.
Tanner Simmons was an Olympic runner who scored the gold for America. Before he could compete in the next Olympics, the earth decided to cancel everything. This was his pass to Second Earth. Meeting and greeting and hanging out at the fake beach.
What he really wanted to do was gouge out his eyes when the rich fat ass schmucks slathered themselves in suntan oil and laid out on the chairs next to their wives who could've doubled as their daughters.
Nothing but a bunch of lard asses with double bubble butts. And ladies, if you're that doughy, don't wear the tightest swim trunk bottoms. Nasty ass butt floss. And I can't stand looking at those god-awful labial split wedgies. Can't you pay someone to cut the flab off of your entitled butts? You people are rich enough.
This was the only way you were getting on The Redeemer.
You have to pay the price.
Your eyes are going to burn for a little while. At least it wasn't your ass that burned off. Be grateful, you idiot, and don't say anything stupid. Be nice.
Tanner did get the eyeballs from the ladies. That was one plus. A few had taken advantage of their drunk sugar daddy husbands who had passed out and talked to Tanner. He was chatting to one hot babe named Barbie Cunningham.
Barbie went on about how she'd love for Tanner to bust open her damn, when he saw the giant mouth rise up from the ocean and swallow three people on inflatable alligators one after the other. Two of the victims were bent awkwardly so their feet were in their faces. Tanner could hear the sound of spines breaking.
Eight fins zipped across the water, closing in on screaming swimmers. A tail lashed across a younger female swimmer. The impact caused her body to explode. Tanner saw one giant shark with the top halves of a dozen people sticking out of all sides of its closed mouth. The victims were reaching out for help as they coughed up blood.
Barbie climbed up on the lifeguard tower with him. She was shivering and crying, and she wouldn't stop telling him to "Do something, Tanner! You have to do something!"
Tanner couldn't take her squirrel shrieks a moment longer and shouted, "Bitch, what am I supposed to do about a bunch of sharks! Blow my whistle at them?"
A blue shark was slamming into the deck chairs on the beach, riding a giant wave to do so. Wood and human limbs flew across the air. A lemon shark had a three hundred pound man in his mouth and was bashing him against the sand until the man went unconscious.
"This is what we do, Barbie. We—"
Barbie was a torso in his lap. Her guts trailed down the lifeguard post and ended in a bull shark's mouth. The bull shark was sucking down the long intestines like a piece of spaghetti. Tanner clung to his seat when Barbie's lifeless torso flopped onto the ground. On the way down, her still-warm guts wrapped around his ankle.
Sucking, slurping, swallowing, and then chomping down on Barbie's top half, she was reduced to pink puree in seconds. Tanner couldn't keep his grip on the post. The shark saw he was caught by the guts, and the shark reeled him in.
Lapping up the guts even harder, the bull shark couldn't wait for Tanner to fall into his mouth. The shark lunged forward with gaping wide mouth. Tanner unleashed a terrorized yawp. It made no difference. When the shark's mouth enveloped him, darkness and teeth overtook him.
Chewing and Swallowing
Dalton Bray was showcasing his talent as a real estate agent on Second Earth. He stood in front of fifteen television screens displaying the finest housing units on the new planet, including lavish mansions, swimming pools, golden gated perimeters, a glass city, and the lush greenery Second Earth had to offer. He had already signed up ninety-eight guests for multi-million dollar properties, and he was barely half-way into his shift.
The Bray way is the only way, Dalton thought. After this, I'm going to hit that bar with the wonderful view of space, and chase some tail. Fear always makes them wet. The Bray makes the ladies stay. The Bray way is the only way.
He approached an older woman named Agnes Worthington. She would be a challenging client, but Dalton didn't back down. He was the best at his job. He would sell this bitch a property, easy.
When Agnes asked if Second Earth was safe, Dalton didn't hesitate. "Of course. We've had people living on the planet for many years to prove its sustainability. Nothing, I assure you, can harm you—"
Surging up from the ground, bending and warping steel, a giant bull shark passed between Dalton and Agnes. The shark moved so fast, it crashed through the ceiling and kept going to the floor below. He was about to grab his potential client and run for safety when he realized the shark's fin sliced Agnes down the middle. She had split in two. Before those two halves could land, a series of lemon sharks grabbed the halves and fought over the pieces, spreading out her guts, and playing tug of war with what woul
dn't break.
Water was bursting from the walls and the many forming holes and cracks surrounding his viewing gallery of investment properties. Dalton could see sharks thrown by high-pressured jets of water swim down the escalators and gobble up those who fled on the way down.
Sharks. Giant Sharks. I can't believe it!
Dalton was about to run to the phone on the wall nearby when two hammerhead sharks collided into him from both sides. Dalton's body burst like a piñata exploded by C-4.
Wasn't it enough I had to put up with you rich fucks rubbing your successes in my face? Now I have to deal with killer sharks!
Barry Prichard was the bartender on the space viewing level of the ship. He was currently the best bartender humanity had to offer. He could whip you up a Todd Collins, a screaming orgasm, a 7 and 7, a fuzzy navel, or he could wing it and make up a new drink on the fly. Today, he would be making some drinks of the flaming variety!
Water was flooding from many directions. It lapped up against the clear panes showcasing the galaxies. Barry was ankle deep in the mess already.
He could see shark bodies punch through walls, drop from above, and somehow propel themselves across the air without the aid of water. They could throw themselves from one end of the room to the other. They weren't flying. They were pitching themselves towards their prey.
Barry reeled in shock seeing an enormous great white shark with twenty people stuffed in its mouth. The black marble gleam in the shark's eye seemed to shine with an evil zeal right before it bit down and crunched up the massacre salad.
A couple were clutching onto each other, pinned against a wall by a circle of closing in lemon sharks. Barry stuffed napkins into an open bottle of brandy, lit it with his lighter, and tossed it in their direction. The flames hit one shark on the back. The flames spread, cooking its skin. The other lemon sharks backed off from the couple.
That's when a group of five persons with crosses drawn in blood on their foreheads cut the couple up with a meat cleaver, machete, and a fire axe.
