Asskickers of the Fantastic

by Jim Stenstrum

  “That was so much fun! I am so doing that again!” said Crayon, still laughing.

  Dementia smiled broadly, almost straining a jaw muscle with her wide grin as the two walked toward her. Crayon gave Dementia a big hug. Rex hung back, happy but also hopelessly confused.

  Crayon looked at Rex and chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I had a growth spurt.”

  Dementia felt horrible. “Blame me, Rex. It was all my doing.”

  “No, I’m to blame. I made her do it,” said Crayon, rushing to her defense.

  Rex was completely flummoxed. He felt like he had just walked into a movie as the end titles were running. He knew he should be angry at somebody for something, but he was too exhausted to figure things out right now.

  “You guys did great. We stopped the bastards and everybody’s safe. That’s all that’s important,” said Rex, who then reluctantly endured hugs from both the girls.

  They walked back into the empty apartment and saw Naomi, who was still struggling inside the wall.

  “Where’s Danny? What did you do to him?” she demanded.

  “He’s dead, Naomi. It’s all over.”

  “Danny’s… dead?” Naomi looked stunned.

  “Sorry, Naomi. Had to be done.”

  “It was our anniversary today. He was going to give me Tiffany’s.”

  Dementia had no idea how to respond to that.

  “Please get me out of here,” said Naomi. “It’s very uncomfortable, and I can’t even itch my nose.”

  Dementia turned to Rex, who slowly shook his head.

  “I can take people with me in a phantom state as long as I touch them. Once I lose contact, it’s set and irreversible. I can’t pull her out. She’s part of the wall now.”

  As she listened to this, Naomi turned pale, as if she was going to be sick. She turned to look at Dementia, who was pulling back her sleeve and raising the porticon.

  “Fuckin’ Danny, this is all his fault,” said Naomi. “He promised me we were gonna have fun.”

  Dementia looked at her sadly. “I know, sweetheart.”

  After a long moment, Naomi looked up pathetically.

  “Will it hurt?”

  Dementia shook her head. “I promise you won’t feel a thing.”

  Naomi looked sad and tragic. Dementia, who seemed genuinely distressed, stepped back a few paces, and pointed the porticon at her. She pushed a stud on the device and sent Naomi into oblivion, leaving behind only a gaping hole in the brick wall where moments ago she was entombed.

  Dementia turned and looked somberly at the others. In the end, there was no celebration or cheering the deaths of Danny and Naomi. The Earth, and specifically New York City, had just dodged a bullet the size of an extinction level asteroid, but Dementia and Rex and Crayon only felt numb and exhausted.

  “This place is a shithole,” said Rex, wearily. “Let’s go home.”

  Chapter 19

  Saturday

  At LaGuardia Airport, Rex checked his watch as he stood alone on the tarmac. It was Saturday afternoon, and the plane from Romania had arrived 40 minutes late. He watched three coffins being unloaded from the plane’s cargo bay, and he pulled out an official looking document from a manila envelope he was carrying. A customs agent approached and Rex handed him the paper.

  “That’s three coffins, Mr. Havoc. Do you want to inspect them?” asked the agent.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Rex. “I’ve made arrangements to have them interred at Green-Wood Cemetery.”

  “Sign here then, please. Sorry for your loss, Mr. Havoc.”

  Rex saw the single page receipt on the clipboard and shook his head in disbelief. Due to the extraordinary circumstances surrounding the death of his friends – as well as the fiery deaths of hundreds of villagers and the destruction of Castle Spiderback — release of the Asskickers’ bodies had been tied up in the Romanian courts for nearly five years. He had written dozens of letters, signed hundreds of official documents and paid many thousands of euros in bribes to get his friends home again, and now back in America he only had to sign a one-page receipt.

  He signed the receipt and gave the clipboard back to the customs official. Then Rex gave the signal to three hearses waiting nearby, which slowly rolled across the tarmac toward the plane.

  * * *

  Two days later, Rex, Crayon and Dementia stood inside a large mausoleum in the spectacular Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, the final resting place of many generals, governors, captains of industry, artists, musicians, and even a handful of silent movie stars. Rex and the girls each held a bouquet of flowers as they looked solemnly at the burial vaults of Lars, Bruno and Springer, interred side by side in a quiet area of the building.

  The vaults were made of Yule marble and alabaster, and looked sublime in the light cast through one of the large stained glass windows. On the plaques, below each of their names, was engraved the Asskicker symbol, and below that was the date of birth and date of death, the latter being the same for all three team members: 11/11/2009.

  Dementia and Crayon had both bought new clothes for the simple memorial service, but Rex preferred to wear his black outfit and leather coat, complete with his steel-toed Asskicker boots, which he thought would be an appropriate tribute to his fallen comrades.

  There was an empty vault next to the others – a fourth vault – on which was inscribed:

  REX HAVOC

  Born: 10/31/1972 Died:

  Crayon looked up at Rex and held his hand. “Wish I’d had the chance to meet them.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.

  “Yeah. You would have liked them.”

  They placed their flowers at the foot of the burial vaults, and walked down a long white corridor toward the exit. Rex stopped short of the door, and turned to the girls.

  “There’s one last goodbye I need to make. I’ll meet you at the limo.”

  Crayon gave him a big, uncomfortable hug.

  “Take your time. We’ll be outside,” said Dementia. She turned to Crayon. “Let’s go, kid.”

  “Who are you calling ‘kid?’” said Crayon.

  Rex watched the girls head out the door, and walked back down the corridor. When he turned the corner, he saw Lars standing near the vaults, giving him a big smile. Rex smiled back.

  “Hello, Lars. I’ve missed you, old friend.” Rex wanted desperately to shake the old man’s hand, but this was only a spiritual visit and he knew the rules.

  “Thanks for getting us out of there, Rex. It’s good to be home again.”

  Lars was dressed casually, in a cardigan sweater, corduroy pants and comfortable slippers, which made sense if you were going to wear the same clothes for the rest of eternity. He lit his pipe with the Godzilla lighter Rex gave him many years ago, and grinned at him warmly.

  “We’re all proud of you, Rex. You’re doing great work.”

  “Thanks, Lars. It’s been tough… real tough… without you guys.”

  Lars put the lighter in his sweater pocket and adopted a paternal tone.

  “Maybe it’s time to move on, Rex,” he said, puffing his pipe. “Maybe it’s time to put a new team together.”

  Rex shook his head. “I don’t know anybody. The only friends I have are those two girls, and they’re both serious pains-in-the-ass.”

  Lars chuckled. “You’ll figure it out.”

  Rex looked at the old man sadly. “Thanks for taking me under your wing all those years ago, Lars. I’ll never forget you.”

  “Goodbye, Rex. Keep fighting the good fight.” Lars took a last puff from his pipe, and disappeared.

  Then, possibly for the first time in his life, Rex allowed himself to cry. He sobbed hard and deeply, until his chest hurt. Then he saw something — scrawled in blood on the plaque of his own empty vault. It now read:

  REX HAVOC

  Born: 10/31/1972 Died: TODAY

  Rex frowned deeply, and then he heard the rhythms of voodoo drums and distant singing, growing louder and coming his way. />
  An impossibly old black man walked around the corner, wearing the garb of a voodoo priest. He grinned maniacally, holding up an iPhone that was playing weird island music. After a moment, he clicked off the phone and the music stopped. He flashed a sinister smile at Rex, who knew the man at once.

  “Papa Zomba. Come to pay your respects?”

  Two huge zombies lumbered up behind the voodoo priest.

  “Oh. You're not alone,” said Rex.

  The priest laughed insanely. “No, no, no. Papa not alone. Papa bring his friends.”

  Rex looked at the two huge zombies, both nearly seven feet tall, shirtless, with milky white eyes.

  “I bet you scared now, huh?” said the priest. “You should be, because Papa Zomba kill you now… Papa Zomba kill you now…”

  Rex only smiled and cracked his knuckles.

  “And here I thought today was going to be a real downer.”

  Across the manicured cemetery lawn, Crayon and Dementia watched from the limo as screams and crashing sounds echoed from the mausoleum. A few seconds later, the two zombies, neither of them wearing a head, stumbled out the door and collapsed to the ground.

  “What the hell?” said Dementia, not sure whether to hang back or intercede.

  A moment later, Rex stepped out of the mausoleum, dusting off his hands. He walked across the grass toward the limo. Behind him, a wild-eyed Papa Zomba emerged from the building, shrieking at Rex, who just kept walking.

  When he reached the car, Crayon asked him, “Who’s that crazy guy yelling?”

  “Just an old friend,” said Rex.

  “Everything okay?” asked Dementia.

  “Couldn’t be better,” he said, and got into the limo with the girls.

  Standing outside the mausoleum, Papa Zomba shook his fist in the air and continued to rail at Rex. Stamped deeply into Papa Zomba’s forehead was the Asskicker symbol, a little memento of this special day from Rex Havoc and his right boot.

  “I'll get you yet, Havoc! You hear me, my friend? You are dead meat! Yeah, yeah, yeah, you had better run away!”

  Rex sat between Crayon and Dementia in the back of the limo as it drove away. As the car wended through the rows of tombstones, he looked through the window at the mausoleum. It stood atop a small hill, under a large oak tree that would provide ample shade on hot summer days. He thought that Lars, in particular, would enjoy this spot.

  Crayon put her head on Rex’s shoulder and Dementia held his hand. He smiled at the girls and was grateful for their company.

  Then, from the corner of his eye, Rex noticed something strange about the chauffeur. Without taking his eyes off the driver or alarming the girls, Rex slowly pulled his hand away from Dementia and reached inside his coat for his silver crowbar.

  He watched closely as the chauffeur’s left hand turned the steering wheel, his right hand adjusted the rear view mirror, his third hand pushed a button that closed the privacy window between the driver and the passengers, and his fourth hand pressed a button to lock all the doors.

  Rex pulled out his crowbar.

  And then, of course, all hell broke loose.

  Author’s Note

  Way, way back in 1978, when dinosaurs still roamed the earth and writers like me only dared to venture out of our caves to feed on unattended Gojirasaurus eggs, I created a comic book series called “Rex Havoc and the Asskickers of the Fantastic.”

  Back then, the cave wall artists got all the glory, and we writers were only allowed rocks and petrified lumps of dinosaur shit on which to write our stories. But I endured, and despite the taunts and occasional spear jabs from the rest of the tribe, I managed to finish the series, which later saw print in Warren Publishing’s 1984 Magazine.

  The adventures of Rex Havoc – all splendidly illustrated by Abel Laxamana — lasted only four issues, but over many generations the series developed a kind of cult following, a readership mainly comprised of pathetic shut-ins and the chronically unemployed, who thought the series was pretty darn funny.

  Today, many eons later, the dinosaurs are all dead, as is the rest of my knuckle-dragging, spear-jabbing tribe, and I am free again to spin new tales of Rex and the Asskickers, the first of which you presently hold in your pudgy, unemployed hands.

  Fans of the original Rex Havoc series will undoubtedly detect that I have made some changes to the old cast of characters, and have also introduced a somewhat darker tone to the proceedings. I debated about making these changes for a long time, but ultimately decided it was time to drag Rex and the Asskickers into the 21st Century and rebuild the series from the ground up.

  I hope you older Rex Havoc fans will not hate me — or worse, buy many, many copies of this book and throw them into a bonfire. That would be, um, awful.

  All of which is to say:

  Welcome aboard! I hope you enjoy this regeneration of Rex Havoc and the Asskickers. If so, I can promise the Asskickers will return very soon – in a few months, rather than epochs.

  Thank you for buying this book. I welcome your comments, and by the way that outfit you have on today looks smashing.

  Your best friend in the whole wide world,

  Jim Stenstrum

  December 2014

  About Jim Stenstrum

  Jim Stenstrum became a writer only after his grift as a faith healer went belly up. Even the power of his X-ray eyes did not help him with this con, because he didn’t know basic anatomy and told everybody their lungs were cloudy and if they would just quit smoking they’d be fine.

  Today, Jim writes his outlandish stories in Santa Clarita, California, where he lives with his beautiful wife, Sue, and their headstrong doggie, Chanel. He still has X-ray eyes and is watching you this very minute.