by Joshua Price
“Wait,” Dr. Malevolent stopped the genie, “don’t give it to him. It’ll get lost in that bottomless pit of despair.”
“What?” the genie answered.
The bunny still had no idea the origins of his very suave bunny suit, or the mysterious pouch stitched into its chest. A compartment that, when opened, could hold a few hundred cubic feet of yarn. Not that he would ever fill it with yarn, but he could. As a demonstration to the genie, Charlie opened the patch and removed a ten-foot pole.
“Interesting magic,” the intrigued genie said.
“Yeah,’ Charlie agreed, “I really have no explanation for it.”
The genie just shrugged and then handed the lamp to Dr. Malevolent. “You keep it then.”
She slid the lamp into her pocket. “I will protect it with my life.”
Greg almost teleported into the lamp, but then stopped and decided to be a little more theatrical. The genie spread into a formless cloud, but before he could head into his lamp, Captain Rescue cried out.
“What!? You’re not joining us!”
“I’ve got work to do,” the formless cloud said, “fixing the mess you started.”
“But…” Captain Rescue began before stopping to think for an excessive amount of time. “Can’t you just wait till we fix your powers, and do it like instantly?”
“Not instantly, but faster than your mind can grasp.”
“Then stay with us!”
“No, I think I’ll just relax inside my lamp and let you ingrates do all the hard work.”
The formless cloud seeped into the magical lamp.
Captain Rescue stomped his feet. “Fine!”
Business sorted, the emotionally wounded superhero tried to recall their location from one of his previous adventures. The lamp had crash-landed right next to the doghouse of some obscure home in some obscure suburb. The grass covering this backyard had long since died and all that remained was a lot of brown dirt. Chipped away paint coated the nearby house, which had fallen to disrepair as its curtains flapped through the blown out windows. To top it off, scorch marks polka dotted the house. Captain Rescue’s eyes returned to the doghouse. He stepped around to its front and peered inside, where whitewashed dog bones lay curled up in an eternal nap.
After shedding a few tears for the canine, he and his friends left the backyard through the rusted gate that was permanently fused into an open position. Captain Rescue held his arms up and carefully passed through it, careful not to touch the metal. He had no idea what could have made its home on that dirty red mess after all these years. Not to mention the ever present threat of tetanus, and the hero knew all too well the dangers of tetanus. If left unchecked, it would render him an inhuman monster.
He released a relieved exhale as he surmounted the rusted gate obstacle and entered the front yard along with his friends, who did not seem to grasp the threat of tetanus as he did. Captain Rescue forced his eyes away from the rusted metal and focused his attention to the neighborhood. A few decades ago, it would have been the picture perfect place to raise a family, but now the neighborhood frightened the crap out of Captain Rescue—not that he was not used to that feeling already. He actually reveled in it. Fear was the perfect deterrent to any unnecessary danger, and it was the main reason Captain Rescue was still alive, that and fate. The four time-displaced misfits trekked through the yard and came to the sidewalk. As they glanced up and down the street, they noticed the huge chunks missing from the curb and rubble littering the street.
Charlie turned to the others and spoke, “What in the hell happened here? And where are all the people? You don’t think… zombies?”
Captain Rescue laughed. “Zombies? In the middle of the day? That’s ludicrous!”
Dr. Malevolent took one look at him, one hard, annoyed look, and then kicked him in the shin. “Are you retarded? Zombies can come out during the day. They’re not vampires.”
“Then how come our experience with them took place at night?”
“Uh… because, that’s just when it happened. It wasn’t anything special.”
“Fine… fine… but when the sun goes down and we get swarmed by zombies, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“The only thing we’ll see coming out at night are apes! Lots and lots of apes! Now just shut up.”
Freight rubbed the shotgun slid underneath his belt and cracked a smile. “That’s just what I was hoping for. Something to kill!”
“You’re always looking for something to kill. It’s what I like best about you,” Dr. Malevolent said with a smile.
“You know what I like best about you?”
Dr. Malevolent sighed and rolled her eyes.
“Absolutely nothing.”
“Yup, saw that coming,” the super villain said as a loud clank derailed her train of thought. “Uh, what was that?”
“What was wha—” Captain Rescue said loudly as Dr. Malevolent cupped her hand over his mouth.
“I don’t think we’re alone,” she whispered before a disgusting look covered her face. “And stop licking my hand, you freak.”
“Sorry,” Captain Rescue said as he pulled his tongue back into the recesses of his mouth.
She motioned for the nearby abandoned home and the heroes sprinted down the concrete path leading up to the door with the tattered remains of the lawn surrounding them on both sides. Freight followed behind the others while on the lookout for anything to shoot. As he began climbing the steps, they shattered and crumbled under the weight of his manliness, but Freight, never one to let anything like gravity get his way, just leapt effortlessly onto the porch. They entered the house and instantly realized that this was probably a bad idea. All that remained of the once homely home was the living room. The roof had caved in and cut off the entrance from the rest of it, which meant the front door was the only way in or out of the house. Unless they wanted to clamor through a window, a window with serrated teeth-like glass. The clanking was just outside now, and the heroes looked for places to hide.
Captain Rescue dove behind the wire frame of a couch for cover. As he stared through it, and subsequently through the front door, the yard, and the torn fabric dangling from the metal coils, he realized what terrible cover this was and started looking for somewhere else to hide. The hero opened a door in the corner of the living room and sealed himself inside a closet before turning around to discover the entire side wall missing. The hero looked into the garage and through the missing garage door.
His face morphed from frustration into horror and bewilderment. A dolphin, wearing its signature exoskeletal armor, patrolled down the sidewalk with four apes in tow. Captain Rescue carefully stepped away from the missing closet wall and reached behind, thumbing for the doorknob. He took hold of it and twisted it slowly, then pushed the door outward as it creaked across the wooden floor. Captain Rescue stepped out of the closet and looked at the others with wide eyes. He could tell right away that they too had seen the dolphin walking up the sidewalk.
The gang kept quiet as they pressed themselves against the front wall of the house. They kept a close eye on the patrol while trying their best to stay inconspicuous. Freight brushed away the torn curtains and watched the dolphin patrol approach the house. Even though he wanted to leap through this window and go to town on his enemy, he knew that they would take little more than one man and his shotgun to defeat. Freight stepped away from the window, but as he did so, his foot just happened to land on the one wooden plank weaker than the others. A loud crack resonated as it snapped in two and sent his foot through the floor. He ripped it from the hole he had created, adding to the cacophony.
Outside, the patrol stopped and faced the house. The bigfoot stood at the ready as their dolphin leader lifted its snout into the air and began clicking, scanning the length of the house with its nose.
“What the hell is it doing?!” Freight asked as softly as he could, which was still quite loud.
“Echolocation,” Captain Rescue said, putting his dolph
in research to good use, “I think he’s looking for something.”
Dr. Malevolent threw her hands into the air. “Geez I wonder what that could be!”
The dolphin raised its mechanical arm, pointed towards the house, and unleashed its hairy hounds. As the apes commenced their charge, their laser rifles sparkled in the sunlight. While the rifles from the past looked similar to projectile-based weapons that shot shiny red lasers instead of bullets, these looked like a laser rifle should. Shining chrome barrels with sleek black stocks formed the weapon’s body, both abundant with curves, resembling that of an aerodynamic aircraft. Coils lined the rifle’s barrel, which honed energy into a deadly charge.
Also improved upon were the bigfoot themselves, which now had muscles rippling through their scantily clad hairy bodies. The dolphins tried their best to get their pets to dress properly, but the apes would not hear any of that nonsense and stuck with their simple loincloth as well as harnesses over their shoulders to hold their laser rifles. Ultimately, the dolphins did not mind the decision one bit. The bigfoot propagated like rats and clothing each and every one of them would have been more trouble than it was really worth. The hairy apes reached the steps leading up to the house and took notice of the freshly broken concrete.
“We might have an issue,” Charlie whispered to the others, “there’s not exactly another way out of here.”
Captain Rescue’s brain prodded him into replying to the statement. “Wait, yeah there is! In the closet!”
Dr. Malevolent glared suspiciously at him. “In… the… closet?”
“No… it’s… uh… just follow me.”
Captain Rescue ran over to the closet as the others followed closely behind and opened it, revealing the missing wall that led to the garage.
“You’re a genius,” Dr. Malevolent said without realizing until afterward that she had complimented him.
Captain Rescue beamed as he led them into the closet and then closed the door from behind. While the dolphin loitered on the sidewalk, the gang crept into the garage and hugged the wall as they headed towards the rear of the house, where a door led into the backyard. As they left the garage, they could hear the bigfoot within tear the place apart with their laser rifles, signaled by the sizzling explosions. They darted across the backyard, through the dirt and beyond the doghouse mausoleum.
As they darted through several backyards, Dr. Malevolent brought up an interesting point. “Y’know… I think they probably knew we were here.”
Captain Rescue made a strange noise with his mouth, meant to relay either his disbelief of her statement or his inability to speak properly while at full gallop. “How could… they have ever known… we were here?”
“Do you see any other patrols or… anything at all?”
“Uh,” Captain Rescue pondered, looking around in every direction while simultaneously avoiding any tripping hazards along the ground. “I guess not.”
Dr. Malevolent did not let the jostling of her body while she ran hamper her flow of speech, unlike a certain captain, “I ascertain that our enemy, with all their futuristic technology, somehow detected our arrival from the past and dispatched that patrol to hunt us down and torture us.”
Captain Rescue gulped and suddenly stopped as he everyone else did the same. He spoke through his quivering lip, “Did you just say… torture?”
“Yes of course, what else would they do to us if we were to be captured?”
“Well I dunno, but… more torture?”
Dr. Malevolent laughed. “Yeah, and if you don’t want to suffer a fate you’ve already experienced once, we had better hurry up and go home.”
Captain Rescue took a deep, heroic breath and placed his hands upon his waist, thrusting his chest into the air. He lifted one hand and pointed at the spire towering not far into the distance. He nodded once to Freight, to Charlie, and then finally to Dr. Malevolent and then began a manly march.
Chapter 9: Ice Cream and Lingerie
The gang made it through the dilapidated neighborhood without encountering any more dolphins or their muscle bound escorts. Within a few minutes, they arrived at the remnants of civilization. A few years back in time, this street would have been the place to be. In many ways, it still was the place to be—the place to be captured and taken back to some futuristic torture chamber where dolphins would flay the skin from their bones, because that’s just what they did.
The storefront-lined street appeared as though it dated a tornado, and judging by the carnage, their relationship had been a tumultuous one filled with passion, anger, deceit, and betrayal. When it finally ended, the tornado grew vindictive and began jumping up and down on each building to teach the street not to fool around with its heart. It certainly looked like something that dramatic occurred. The details might not have been quite the same. Maybe instead of a tornado the street dated a hurricane or an earthquake, but either way, it was ugly. Only a handful of stores survived this relationship; the others had crumbled under the weight of shattered love. These survivors had their insides strewn out along a street that had not seen traffic in some time. A single streetlight with tennis shoes dangling from it kept watch over it all.
Captain Rescue instantly recognized the scenery. He had once saved an elderly woman from hooligans right here, but the senior citizen was not very appreciative of his heroic deed, something that had bothered him to this day. He risked life and limb to rescue her. Why hadn’t she at least thanked him? Sadly, Captain Rescue had misinterpreted the incident; the hooligans were only trying to help the poor woman cross the street. They knew it, she knew it, and the only person out of the loop was Captain Rescue, who fought the miscreants off with a can of pepper spray. He looked down the street and tried to figure out why the poor old lady had been so irritated with him.
The gang climbed onto the sidewalk and Captain Rescue kicked a loose brick that flew through the air and then hit the ground with a resonating clank. It only took a few milliseconds for him and the others to realize that this sound originated not from the brick, but from another dolphin patrol coming down the street. Without wasting too much time, they rushed into the remains of a lingerie boutique. Captain Rescue picked up a loose brassiere, held it up to his chest, and admired the view. Freight sighed and yanked the hero’s ankles out from under him. He fell to the ground while the lingerie hung in the air for a moment and then fell on top of him.
The patrol was just around the corner now, and Captain Rescue pulled that dirty old brassiere over his head to better shield himself from their prying eyes and echolocation. As their enemy neared, the gang began to hear something else amongst the clanks of mechanized legs—a dragging of chains. The dolphin came into view and so did the ragged humans shackled in a line behind it. The sea mammal did not bother looking into the lingerie boutique, probably because turning like that would have been too much for both its spine and the armor to accomplish.
The downtrodden humans stared at the ground without looking away, even if their flexible spines would have allowed them the movement with ease. A girl with disheveled hair that blocked most of her view looked into the store as she passed. Captain Rescue, close to the ground and mostly out of sight, peered into what he could see of her eyes. Immediately, she stared back. The hero waved cheerfully and then brought his hand to his mouth, telling her to keep quiet. She nodded subtly before turning her head forward to make sure she drew no attention to the hidden heroes.
A pair of bigfoot brought up the tail end of the patrol, and then they left without so much as a glance into the lingerie boutique. As the clanking faded away, Captain Rescue and the others got to their feet. He walked to the front of the store and carefully peered down the street and giggled while watching the bigfoots’ muscular buttocks move up and down.
Captain Rescue turned to the others and counted with his fingers before looking very perplexed. “Wasn’t there only four of us?”
Dr. Malevolent nodded without saying a word, instead using her eyes to convey her annoya
nce.
“Then who’s that?” he asked while pointing between Dr. Malevolent and Freight to where a young woman stood who blended into the wrecked store. She wore ragged clothes and presumably had not showered in generations. A messenger bag slung over her shoulder had its flap open and revealed the items scavenged from the city’s remains.
The girl held up her hand. “Hello.”
“Wait a second,” Dr. Malevolent said as she eyed her up and down. “Where on earth did you come from?”
“I was in here looking for supplies when you came in, so I hid in the corner.”
She laughed. “Supplies in a lingerie shop?”
“Supplies are scarce,” the girl answered with a shrug.
“I guess so,” Dr. Malevolent agreed. “You must be good at hiding.”
“It’s why I’m not chained up or dead.” Her eyes fell to Captain Rescue and she stumbled backwards. “Wait a second… I know you.”
He placed his hands on his waist and assumed his heroic stance. “I am Captain Rescue!”
“You abandoned us! Left us to these monsters!”
“Uh…” he said sulking down. “Sorry?”
Dr. Malevolent stepped in, “How long has this occupation been going on?”
“Three years!”
The super villain was stunned. “Three years? All of this carnage in just three years?”
The girl placed her hands over her eyes and wept.
Captain Rescue stepped up and placed his hand upon her shoulder. “Fear not, noble girl, for I will save you from this oppression!”
She looked up to him as tears streamed from her eyes. “I knew you would return some day! I just knew it!” The girl rested her head against Captain Rescue’s chest and he shivered as her tears soaked his spandex.
“Are you alone out here?”
“No, there’s a small group of us hidden not far from here.” She wiped her tears away and composed herself.
“How do you survive in a place like this?” Charlie asked her.
“We stay underground most of the time and people like me come to the surface to scavenge.” She motioned for the messenger bag over her shoulder.
