by Travis Hill
3
He arrived at Hot Tips five minutes later. The bouncer opened the double entrance doors to help the alien enter the establishment easier, but Gxkxl still had to contort and duck to get under the short human-height door. Music blared inside the club, vibrating the sonic receptors on his legs. Every human in the place turned to look at the creature with varying degrees of curiosity, intoxication, or annoyance at the interruption of their entertainment.
“Glaxo! Good, good. I trust you found the place okay?” a short, wide human shouted at him over the music. Everyone else turned back to their drink or their table dance. “I wasn’t sure Donovan would actually send you.”
“My name is Gxkxl,” the alien corrected the pudgy human.
“Glaxo. First rule is don’t argue with The Boss. Second rule is don’t argue with The Boss. It gets you dead,” the grinning man said, slapping Gxkxl on the backside of the alien’s hard carapace.
“As you say, Mr. Tokalev.”
“Hah! Did you hear that, Andri? The bug called me ‘Mister!’” Tokalev shouted the question to the bouncer that hadn’t yet left the alien alone with the club’s owner. Andri grinned at his boss.
“Listen up, bugface,” Tokalev said to Gxkxl, “I’m assigning you your first duty. You, along with my associates Alexi and Karl, are going to pay a friend of mine a visit. This friend owes me a fairly large sum of money. If he doesn’t pay that money, I want you to…I don’t know…bite off his head.”
“I cannot bite off a human head, Mr. Tokalev,” Gxkxl informed him.
“Okay,” Tokalev said as he studied what he thought might be the alien’s mouth. It didn’t look big enough to get around a human head, but Tokalev had watched nature shows where a snake could open its jaws wide enough to get them around a giant rat.
“So cut off one of his limbs with your sawblade arms, or inject him with space poison or something,” he chuffed, seeing glowing drops of liquid leaking from a couple of Gxkxl’s claws. “Be inventive, if that concept is even understandable.”
“I am aware/enlightened of the concept of ‘invention,’ Mr. Tokalev. I’m afraid, however, that I can do none of those tasks.”
“What? You’re a goddamn ten foot tall alien that looks straight out of a horror movie! What do you mean you can’t do any of those things? Just kill the guy if he doesn’t pay!”
“I cannot do such a thing. I am unable.”
“Unable or unwilling? I won’t tolerate refusal to follow orders, Groxi.” Tokalev’s face clouded.
“Unable, Mr. Tokalev. My species is unable to purposely take the life of another sentient being,” the creature said, his translator sounding proud.
“Does the friggin’ government know this?”
“Yes. They are fully aware/enlightened. It is the main factor in allowing me to explore/evidence your society. I am very much unlike your species I am afraid/apologize.”
“So you are,” Tokalev said, squinting suspiciously at the massive alien. “Can you at least pretend to be scary?”
Gxkxl repeated the motions he’d displayed when the teenagers had harassed him in the street earlier. Tokalev, Andri the bouncer, three of the girls dancing on the stage next to him, and at least ten patrons shrank in fear, screams accompanying the sounds of breaking glass.
“Holy Jesus,” Tokalev breathed after Gxkxl’s spikes retracted and his wings were once again under the hard shell of the his back. “What’s that crap dripping out of your face and claws?”
Gxkxl’s translation unit made a noise that sounded like a deep breath. “It is my species’ hormonal regulationary control.”
“Hormone what? English, Gixxel. Speak English.”
“The substance is what my kind secretes during reproduction.”
“Gross. Interesting…but gross,” Tokalev said, scrunching his face up. He had a sudden thought, and called over one of the dancers. “Candi, meet Galaxian. Galaxian, meet Candi. Candi here is going to swallow a drop or two of that goop.” Tokalev pushed the topless dancer towards the towering alien.
“Huh…huh…hi!” the girl said after finally tamping down her fear and revulsion. She held out a hand as if to shake one of his.
“Greetings, Candi,” Gxkxl answered, looking down at her.
When the creature didn’t raise any of its four arms to shake her hand, she looked back at her boss. Tokalev shrugged and nodded his head towards Gxkxl, letting her know to get on with it. Candi took a step forward, grabbed one of the armored appendages, and pulled the claw towards her face. She gave a nervous glance to her boss again, then Andri. Both of them gestured for her do what she’d been told. She let out a breath she’d been holding and put one of the claws that still leaked the glowing fluid into her mouth.
It had a taste unlike anything she’d ever experienced. It was like milk and cookies, but at the same time it was like a sweet mixed drink. A second later the taste seemed to shift to chocolate, then again to butterscotch pudding. She felt like she was going to die at the same time she felt like she could suddenly do calculus.
Candi’s world shifted, everything in her vision becoming soft, shiny, alive. She noticed an empty chair close to the stage and wandered over to it. Tokalev grunted and walked after her. When he reached her, she seemed to be in deep conversation with the chair.
Tokalev yanked her arm, spinning her around to face him. “Well?”
“Jesus says I should go back to school,” Candi cooed at her boss. “He showed me how tachyon particle waves function as a low-latency information transfer medium.”
“Good girl, now get your ass back on stage,” Tokalev commanded, giving her a swat on her behind when she didn’t immediately move.
He turned back to the alien, giving Gxkxl a hard look. “Does the government know about this…hormone crap you do?”
“Negative,” said the translator hanging from Gxkxl’s neck. “I was not within my reproductive cycle during my time with the Earth authorities.”
“See?” Tokalev grinned again. “You aren’t completely useless. Now get your ass in the truck. Alexi and Karl are outside waiting.”
Gxkxl couldn’t smile, he didn’t have a mouth capable of such a thing, but a pleasure gland fed a stream of proteins into his blood as he ducked back under the door and scuttled to the waiting truck. He’d show Mr. Donovan Young that he was most assuredly not ‘less than useless.’
CAPTURE AT THE HIVE
“Eric!” his mother yelled from the bottom of the stairs.
“It’s MEGATRON!!!” Eric’s howl traveled back down the stairs from his open bedroom doorway.
Mom sighed. “Okay…Megatron William Goldman, get down here! NOW!”
Megatron, in the full formal battle dress of the Galactic Republic, arrived at the stairs. The Evil Queen Mother at the bottom glared at him, saliva dripping from her gigantic fangs, bits of human flesh lodged between her massive, razor-sharp claws.
“I, General Megatron, only take orders from the Galactic President!” he said as he descended toward his mortal enemy. “Name, rank, and serial number is all you’ll get out of me!”
Eric put his wrists together as if to give himself up willingly to the Evil Queen Mother so she could hobble him with laser handcuffs, preventing him from using his utility belt to attempt an escape.
“Listen up, defender of the planet—“ Mom said through gritted teeth.
“GALAXY!” Megatron shouted defiantly, struggling against the invisible minions that were under her mind-wash power as they dragged him closer to her.
“Whatever,” she continued, “how about defending the kitchen from the overflowing garbage can?”
“A simple task,” Megatron said with distaste. “Too simple for the Defender of the Galaxy. Do you not see the greatness that is General Megatron?” he asked, pointing, wrists still bound by the laser handcuffs, to the construction paper medals pinned to the chest of his uniform.
“When you are done ‘defending’ the garbage, how about exterminating the dirty aliens str
ewn all over your room? Captain Megalon’s troops would toss him out of the airlock if they knew about the dirty underwear everywhere up there in his cabin,” she said with a good deal of sarcasm.
“GENERAL Mega-TRON!” he wailed at her two-pronged insult attack.
“Well, it’s a pigsty in there kiddo.”
“This is an insult to my station! I’m the one who saved colonists on Alpha-9! I’m the hero that helped avert the slaughter of millions of innocents on Tau Ceti! This is—“
“—This is me paddling your little behind with extreme prejudice!” the Evil Queen Mother shouted in a dangerous voice, full of finality, grabbing him by the shoulder and force-marching him to the Hive’s cold, pitch-black dungeon where the refuse pits awaited.
“Let it be known that I hereby vow to avenge, or be avenged of this injustice!” Megatron said, back to his defiant prisoner-of-war tone as he pulled the nearly overflowing trash bag from the can, already plotting his next escape attempt.
Tune in next week for the next thrilling chapter of General Megatron: Galactic Defender!
Author’s Ramblings
What Did I Just Read?
Hello readers. I’d like to take a moment to explain what you’ve just read. There’s an author named Joe Konrath that self-published authors like me follow (sometimes almost religiously?). He’s sort of a hero to a lot of writers for encouraging us to go the self-published route. There’s a lot of reasons for this, and if you are interested, I highly suggest reading back through his blog to see his journey from traditionally published author that was mid-list at best (meaning he wasn’t promoted like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, James Patterson, and other top authors I’m sure you can think of), to self-published best seller.
https://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
Just yesterday, August 23, 2013 to be exact, he tacked on a bit to a guest post challenging those of us who write and self-publish to do what I call ‘eight hour fiction’. Could we come up with a short story, possibly even a novelette, write it, edit it, create our own book cover art for it, and publish it within eight hours?
Some might complain that self-publishing already fills the book channel with drivel, and this would be just another cheap stunt or money-grab by terrible authors. However, to serious authors, this was an interesting challenge. I’m not going to claim I or anyone else that has done this are ever going to be mistaken for Hemingway or Chandler, but I’ve read enough stories from some of the other authors that took up the challenge to believe that there will be a lot of good short stories that come from this.
Anytime I see a challenge to write a short story, I stop working on everything else for a few hours and bang out something, usually around 3,000 - 5,000 words. Some are good. Some are bad. Hopefully these two are good. The hardest part for me with this book, and no doubt the worst part for you, other than having to read this drivel, was the cover art. I’m absolutely awful at Photoshop or MS Paint. Or anything. I’m a terrible artist. I do apologize for the travesty that greeted you in the Amazon/iTunes/B&N store and then your Kindle or whatever e-reader you own. But we had to make the covers ourselves.
Which makes me ask a very serious question: why do readers still judge a book by its cover? You may scoff at this, but this is actually still true.
A Career Move
Right. So. This was just one of those random thoughts that went something like, “I wonder what a space alien trying to be a stand-up comedian would be like.” Yes. I do have thoughts like this. All of the time. To be honest, this wasn’t even the story I originally thought up for the eight hour challenge. I had about two hundred words of that one down when I had the idea for Gxkxl and his plight.
Capture At The Hive
I love Calvin & Hobbes. If you have never read a Calvin & Hobbes comic strip, then you’ve maybe never laughed so hard that you cried and passed gas at the same time over some artistic scribbles on a page. I’m actually a little frightened that Bill Watterson is an evil wizard that has the power to tap into human minds and extract memories along with bits of their imaginations. I’ve read far too many C&H strips that were almost straight out of my own childhood.
I’ve got a few other little ‘flash fiction’ bits of Megatron, the Evil Queen Mother, and Friends (like The Shouting King Father, and there’s no doubt a Mean Little Princess in there somewhere as well) that I think I’d like to explore in the future. I’d never thought about writing a children’s book until now, but then again I never thought anyone would ever read something I wrote and leave me a good review after paying real money for it.
I’ve had a few bad reviews too…some people actually want to read good stories that they pay for. It’s hard to sell books with a disclaimer on the cover that says “You probably just wasted money by purchasing this story! It’s awful!” However, I know people who still will spend money on a book that had that emblazoned across the cover.
I’m one of those people.
I like a challenge.
And finally…
Shut up already Travis.
*ahem*
Once again, thanks to Joe Konrath (JA Konrath works too) for giving us this challenge. And if you like crime, horror, even a sci-fi story once in a while, search for him on Amazon. He’s published over forty books, so you’ll find something you like. Find out why we authors look up to him.
Thanks to you for reading these two very short stories. I apologize if you paid for them because you didn’t catch them for free. However, my five cats would like to thank you for providing them a bit of food and litter for yet another month.
Thanks to my wife Carly for not putting a fork into my eye whenever she has the opportunity. Oh, and for being my first reader and always being honest. Thanks to Kendall Nellis and Jeff Johnson for spending thirty minutes of my eight hour allotment reading these two stories and giving me feedback. And as always, thank you Amazon for creating a place for writers to publish our words for others to read.
Boring, Shameless (Self) Promotion Stuff:
https://www.angrygames.com
@Angry_Games (Twitter)
[email protected] (feedback welcome, even hatemail!)
https://www.facebook.com/angryauthor
https://eepurl.com/D2ktH (mailing list if you want to be annoyed by me once in a while announcing what I’m up to or when I release a new book)
Hey! I wrote some other stories too. They are just as awful as this one. I highly recommend you avoid them at all costs:
“It’s Better This Way” - (Perma-free)
Twenty-three years ago, the 'bulls' appeared in orbit and destroyed Earth's infrastructure in less than ten seconds. These days, the alien invaders aren't as much of a problem as the surviving humans are.
Evan Greggs learns that things aren't always as bad as they seem, but sometimes the choices to be made are as murky as they are difficult when it comes to living on The Farm, a community of survivors near the Cascade Mountains in central Oregon.
When a detachment of the old United States Army arrives with new information about the invaders, the citizens of The Farm are tasked with making another hard choice.
24,000 word novella
“Ability - Part I” - (Perma-free)
“Ability - Part II” - ($.99)
“A Christmas Tale” - (Perma-free)
He knows if you've been bad or good...
The three Devlin boys are in trouble, and this year they might make it onto Santa's 'naughty' list.
6,535 word short story (I’m going to warn you that this is not a story you want to read to your children. You can imagine the reason why I am warning you…)
There are a few other stories, but you get the idea. If you didn’t get this book from Amazon, have no fear, almost all of my stories are available here:
iTunes / Apple
Barnes & Noble
Kobo
Sony
book with friends
