Space Team: A Lot of Weird Space Shizz: Collected Short Stories

by Barry J. Hutchison

  Hanging back, Tobey Maguire gave his polo neck one more dusting, took another deep breath, and whispered a second motivational speech.

  With that done, he approached the saloon’s swing doors, channelled his inner cowboy, and pushed.

  THUNK.

  The doors didn’t budge. Through the gap at the top he noticed movement as several people turned in their chairs to look at him. He was only dimly aware of them, though, because he was too embarrassed to meet their eye. Instead, he pushed the doors again, harder this time, and felt his cheeks prickle when they once more refused to open.

  “Pull,” said a voice from inside.

  It was only then that Tobey Maguire noticed the brass handles on each door, and the shiny metal plates with “Pull to open” etched on them in inch high letters. Shizz. Had they been there the whole time?

  He pulled both doors, swinging them outwards. Unfortunately, his arms weren’t long enough to open them both properly, so he was forced to let go of one and sidle through the gap left by the other. He stopped just inside the saloon, then let out a little yelp as the door swung closed and slapped him crisply across the buttocks.

  Silence had fallen in the saloon. Or near-silence, at least. The piano player was still playing, but his fingers were gliding softly across the keys now, so the notes floated lightly around the smoke-filled room.

  There were twenty or more big round tables in the place, each one seating anywhere from two to eight people. The men wore hats and scowls. The women, for the most part, wore dresses that ranged from ‘formal church wear’ to ‘definitely a prostitute’, although one or two were decked out in the same hat-and-scowl combo as the men.

  Despite their differences, everyone had one thing in common. They were all staring at Tobey Maguire with a level of intensity that made him deeply uncomfortable.

  “Howdy,” he said, touching the brim of his hat the way he’d seen Clint Eastwood do in some of his movies.

  He remembered he wasn’t wearing a hat, wondered briefly how insane the gesture must have looked to those watching, then tried not to dwell on it.

  “The, uh, the name’s Maguire. Tobey Maguire.”

  No-one responded. If they’d heard of him, they were keeping their cards close to their chests.

  “Haha. Please, no autographs!” said Tobey Maguire, which went down pretty much as well as you might expect, and was nothing like the zinger he hoped it would be. He cleared his throat and glanced back out into the street. Maybe an eternity in a featureless white void wouldn’t be that bad, after all.

  “Well now, Mr Maguire. You bring yourself over here and let me fix you a drink.”

  The voice that had spoken was rich and warm, like hot chocolate on a cold winter’s night. Tobey Maguire looked over in the direction it had come from, and saw a gray-haired black man in a pristine white apron beckoning to him from behind the bar.

  Tobey Maguire noticed two things about the man’s face. The first thing he noticed was how open and friendly it was. It had a smiling mouth and twinkling eyes that suggested mischief. But not mean mischief where someone would be inconvenienced in some way, but a positive, all-inclusive kind of mischief where everyone would have a great time, and lifelong friendships would be forged between all those involved.

  The second thing he noticed about the face was that it belonged to the actor, Morgan Freeman.

  The murmur of conversation returned as Tobey Maguire crossed to the bar and clambered gracelessly onto a tall stool. Morgan Freeman polished a shot glass with the corner of a towel, then clunked it onto the bar top.

  “What can I get you, Mr Maguire?”

  “Morgan Freeman,” said Tobey Maguire. He winced a little at that. He probably should’ve nested the name in an actual sentence, or even just preceded it with, “You’re,” but he hadn’t. Still, Morgan Freeman didn’t seem put out. If anything, his smile widened, and Tobey Maguire felt his spirits lift.

  “You got me,” said Morgan Freeman. “Now what will it be?”

  “Uh, what do you recommend?” Tobey Maguire asked.

  “Well, most folks, they go for whiskey, but…” He looked Tobey Maguire up and down, and that mischief twinkled in his eyes again. “Are you a man who enjoys taking a risk, Mr Maguire?”

  Tobey Maguire almost blurted out a definitive, “God, no!” but something about Morgan Freeman’s smile stopped him. It was a smile that would do him no harm, he knew, and he found himself slowly nodding the affirmative.

  Morgan Freeman’s face lit up. “I thought so. You wait right there.”

  “OK,” said Tobey Maguire. He motioned in the direction of the piano player. “What’s with the music. Isn’t it kind of… downbeat?”

  Morgan Freeman chuckled. “Hear that, Richie?” he said, raising his voice. “Mr Maguire doesn’t approve of your playing.”

  The piano clunked tunelessly to a stop. Tobey Maguire shook his head. “What? No, I just meant it was… That I expected…”

  “He’s right,” hollered one of the other occupants of the bar. “For Christ’s sake, Richie, play something cheerful. We’re all on the brink of suicide here.”

  The piano player, Richie, jumped up as if he’d been electrocuted. He glowered at Tobey Maguire from the shadows beneath his hat, bowed once to the largely unappreciative audience, then walked right on out the front door with his artistic integrity firmly intact.

  There was a moment of confused silence, then the chatter returned even louder than before.

  “There’s a gentleman who needs to be more open to criticism,” said Morgan Freeman. He turned and reached for a larger glass, then busied himself fixing Tobey Maguire a drink. With his back turned, it was impossible to see what the Shawshank Redemption star was doing, but Tobey Maguire felt confident he was going to enjoy it.

  “Watch your wallet,” hissed a voice from beside him.

  The squirrel was back, sitting perched on the next stool along.

  “Excuse me?” said Tobey Maguire.

  Morgan Freeman turned. “Yes, son?”

  Tobey Maguire shook his head. “Uh, no. No. Not you, sorry.” He gestured to the squirrel. Morgan Freeman shifted his eyes to it for a moment, then smiled a little less convincingly than before and went back to preparing the drink.

  “I said watch your wallet. Him and his kind will prise that slab of leather from your cold dead fingers if’n they has to.”

  “What do you mean ‘his kind’?” Tobey Maguire demanded. “Actors?”

  “You know what I mean, boy,” the squirrel drawled. “Ni—”

  Tobey Maguire punched the squirrel off the stool with a single frantic swipe. He looked up just as Morgan Freeman turned back.

  “Sorry about him. I don’t know him. He just turned up,” Tobey Maguire babbled. “I don’t think like that.”

  Morgan Freeman frowned a little, although his smile didn’t falter. He raised himself onto his tiptoes and peered at the empty stool. “Who just turned up?” he asked. “And you don’t think like what?”

  Tobey Maguire gestured down to where the squirrel had landed, but it was now a squirrel free zone.

  “There was… There was a squirrel,” he explained. “There was a big squirrel.”

  Morgan Freeman hesitated. “A big squirrel, you say?”

  “It could talk. It said… Well, it doesn’t matter what it said. Didn’t you see it?”

  A flicker of concern crossed Morgan Freeman’s face. “I can’t say I did, Mr Maguire. Is it gone now?”

  Tobey Maguire looked around. “Yeah. Yeah, it’s gone.”

  “Well alright, then,” said Morgan Freeman, his smile hitting its stride again. He set a glass on the bar between them. It was more of a mug than a glass, with a large handle and a number of frosted dimples.

  A layer of cream, several inches thick, was swirled on top of a faintly yellow liquid, and the whole lot had been finished off with slices of banana and a drizzle of caramel. Just by looking at the thing, Tobey Maguire could have sworn he felt his e
yes contract Type 2 Diabetes.

  “One Banoffee Pie milkshake,” Morgan Freeman announced. He leaned in closer and winked. “It’s the boss’s favorite. Go on. Try it.”

  A red and white striped bendable straw was sticking up through the cream like the periscope of a submarine. Tobey Maguire pinched the end between his lips and sucked. A creamy flavor-bomb exploded in his mouth, filling it with hints of banana and toffee and… some kind of ginger biscuit, maybe? Whatever it was, it was fonking delicious.

  “Good, right?” said Morgan Freeman, indicating the milkshake.

  Tobey Maguire nodded, still sucking on the straw.

  “That’ll be eighty-six dollars.”

  Tobey Maguire coughed, mid-sip, and ejected a creamy banana discharge through all of the main orifices in his face. Morgan Freeman leaned back in time to avoid any of the gloopy ejection getting on his skin, but his apron didn’t get off so lightly.

  Wheezing as he frantically tried to dislodge milk-sodden biscuit crumbs from the lining of his nose, Tobey Maguire stared up at the barman in horror.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed. “That was an accident.”

  Morgan Freeman chuckled and waved a dismissive hand. “Oh please, son, I brought that on myself. I was teasing you. The drink’s on the house.”

  “Thanks.”

  “My pleasure,” said Morgan Freeman, wiping spots of banana-flavored milk from the bar. “I still look back fondly on our time working together.”

  Tobey Maguire frowned. “Did we… We didn’t work together.”

  “Sure we did, son. On Deep Impact.”

  “That was Elijah Wood,” said Tobey Maguire.

  A frown troubled Morgan Freeman’s impressive eyebrows. “With the asteroid? You sure?”

  “I’m sure. I wasn’t in Deep Impact.”

  Recognition flashed behind Morgan Freeman’s eyes. “Of course. I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing. You’re the Hobbit guy.”

  “That’s also Elijah Wood,” said Tobey Maguire. He took another sip of his drink. “I was Spider-Man.”

  “The superhero? I didn’t see that one,” said Morgan Freeman. “Didn’t you win an Oscar for something?”

  Tobey Maguire shook his head.

  “Golden Globe?”

  “Teen Choice Award,” said Tobey Maguire.

  “Oh,” said Morgan Freeman.

  “Best kiss,” said Tobey Maguire. “I was upside down.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see. Well, that is quite an achievement,” Morgan Freeman replied. He tapped the side of the now empty milkshake glass. “Same again?”

  Before Tobey Maguire could reply, a scream rang out from somewhere above. Morgan Freeman’s eyes darted to the ceiling, then he ran to the end of the bar and flipped open a hatch. “Come on, superhero,” he said, beckoning for Tobey Maguire to come through. “We’d better go check that out.”

  “What? Why me?” asked Tobey Maguire.

  “Don’t trust him,” muttered the squirrel, which Tobey Maguire now realized was hiding under his stool. “He’s luring you back there so he can kill you. They’re all the same.”

  “Shut up, you racist fonk,” Tobey Maguire whispered.

  Morgan Freeman had heard him. Of course he had.

  “You OK, son?”

  “Fine!” said Tobey Maguire, springing down from the stool. He glanced back at it, but the squirrel was gone. The other occupants of the bar either hadn’t heard the scream from upstairs, or couldn’t care less. None of them had even acknowledged it, much less moved to help.

  Tobey Maguire followed Morgan Freeman through a bead curtain door at the back of the bar. A narrow set of stairs led up into the gloom of a floor above.

  “Who’s up there?” Tobey Maguire whispered, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the near silence.

  “I don’t know,” Morgan Freeman admitted. “We should go check it out.”

  “Right,” agreed Tobey Maguire. When it was clear Morgan Freeman wasn’t going to go first, he nodded and swallowed. “Right. Go check it out,” he said.

  And with that, Tobey Maguire crept up the staircase and into the waiting dark.

  3.

  Tobey Maguire would have liked more steps. More steps would have given him more time to mentally prepare himself for whatever awaited him at the top. Annoyingly, there were only twelve of the things, and with Morgan Freeman ushering him on, he couldn’t even take his time climbing them.

  They emerged into a quaintly decorated corridor with a lot of wood paneling and a few ornate wall-mounted gas lamps. Only one of these was on, the flame inside casting flickering shadows across the carpet and over the woodwork.

  There were four doors leading off from the corridor that Tobey Maguire could see. Not that he did see them, of course, as his focus was almost entirely on the rasping, barely-alive figure lying in a pool of blood on the floor.

  “Um…” he said, searching for the words that would make it clear this – whatever this was – was beyond the scope of his expertise. But Morgan Freeman’s hands were on his back now, guiding him over to the choking, spluttering victim.

  It was a man, mid-thirties probably. His hair was reddish brown, his eyes were wide, and his throat was largely missing. Blood burbled and bubbled in the wound as the guy frantically tried to fill his lungs with something other than his own body fluids.

  “Don’t let Freeman near the guy. He’ll take his watch,” said the squirrel, who Tobey Maguire was dismayed to find standing some way along the corridor. He was eating a Twix by nibbling off the chocolate around the edges, then prizing the caramel from the biscuit base. “His name’s Conrad, by the way.”

  “Conrad?” said Tobey Maguire.

  Morgan Freeman leaned over his shoulder. “You know this man?”

  “What? No,” said Tobey Maguire. “It was… Nothing.”

  He looked around for somewhere he could kneel without getting blood on his pants, but unless he chose a spot at the other end of the corridor, that wasn’t possible. He bit the bullet and knelt beside the gasping man.

  “Is it… is it Conrad?”

  Conrad nodded. This made blood spurt more violently from his neck. Tobey Maguire felt it spray across his face. It wasn’t easy, but he fought the urge to jump up and scream.

  “Are you OK?” Tobey Maguire asked.

  Conrad shook his head.

  “H-hello,” he gargled.

  “Hi,” said Tobey Maguire. He looked back at Morgan Freeman. “Should we call an ambulance?”

  Conrad nodded. More blood spurted.

  “No ambulances around here,” Morgan Freeman said. He tossed Tobey Maguire his bar towel and hurried for the stairs. “Try to stop the bleeding. I’ll go get help.”

  “He’s not going to get help,” whispered the squirrel, his face now just inches from Tobey Maguire’s ear. “He’s going to steal your job.”

  “I don’t have a job,” Tobey Maguire snapped.

  “Course you don’t. Filthy nimmigrant.”

  “Shut up!”

  “Hel-lo,” Conrad wheezed.

  “Again, hi.”

  “Hello.”

  “It’s probably best if you don’t talk,” said Tobey Maguire. He pressed the towel against the open wound on Conrad’s throat.

  Suddenly, Conrad’s hand were clawing at Tobey Maguire’s polo neck, his eyes bulging in their sockets.

  “Helloooooo,” he said, the word tailing off into a moist, bubbly whisper.

  And then Conrad’s hands slipped away, and his head fell back, and what little life was left of him ebbed out onto the carpet.

  Tobey Maguire knelt there, the towel still pressed against the dead man’s throat, the corridor spinning around him.

  “Conrad? Conrad? You still with me?”

  “He’s way dead,” said the squirrel. He was leaning against the wall across from Tobey Maguire, picking bits of Twix out of his teeth. “Be sure to wash your hands. That’s dago blood. He probably had AIDS.”

  “Shut the fonk up with t
hat shizz!” Tobey Maguire barked. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “Why do you want to know? You fixing to steal my identity, Ali Baba? Just let me see you try.”

  “Why would I want to steal your ID? You’re a fonking squirrel,” Tobey Maguire pointed out. “And exactly where do you think I’m from, by the way?”

  The squirrel’s fur bristled. “OK, boy. One, you’re from somewhere that ain’t here, and that’s all I need to know. And second, I’m ‘a fonking squirrel’? And you call me racist?”

  Morgan Freeman returned before Tobey Maguire could offer a retort. He was out of breath, a sheen of sweat glistening on his wrinkled brow. “I found some band-aids,” he said. “Any good?”

  Tobey Maguire looked down at the corpse on the floor. “Not really,” he said.

  “Oh. Well, that sucks,” said Morgan Freeman.

  “Yeah,” Tobey Maguire agreed. He stood up, the carpet squelching beneath his feet. “Who could have done this?”

  “Beats me,” said Morgan Freeman. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Hell, I’ve been in here since the boss first saw Seven, and I ain’t never seen anything like this before. Sure, we all have our disagreements, but I ain’t never seen anyone turn up dead before. Something ain’t right, Mr Maguire. You mark my words.”

  The corridor spun faster than ever, forcing Tobey Maguire to lean a hand against the wall for support. It smeared a bloody print onto the wooden panel.

  “The Mindraper,” he said.

  “The what?” asked Morgan Freeman.

  “Now he gets it,” said the squirrel. “About time, camel jockey.”

  Tobey Maguire ignored him. “There’s something coming. I think… I think maybe it did this.”

  Morgan Freeman stroked his chin. His wizened head nodded in contemplation. “In that case, we’d best go see Sheriff Carver.”

  “Cal’s the sheriff?”

  “Hmm? Oh, no. It’s his brother, Colt.”

  Tobey Maguire’s eyebrows raised. “I didn’t know Cal had a brother.”

  “Oh, he doesn’t,” said Morgan Freeman. “It’s kind of a long story.”