This is the day past tomorrow. Time has ended, and man has begun his endless journey toward the menacing stars.
What's frightening here is that most of the stories are actually quite tame. The "moon cities" mentioned were built underground quite deliberately, and didn't "plunge" there. The "menace from earth" is a woman out to steal the heroine's boyfriend. And what is this "time is ended" stuff? Sheesh.
Marshall Woods strode broadly through the door of the saloon.
"What's this I hear 'bout some sort of contest?" He inquired as he stood
at the
table which sported the local poker game.
"Oh, hallo, Marshall," piped little Michael Duncan, who had just
recently
reached the age where he could play with the 'big fellas', "I dunno
nothin about
any contest. Maybe you should ask Mr. Assroth over yonder."
Marshall's eyes peered over his glutonous cheeks as he caught sight of the genteeled man who was partially hidden behind his large pile of winnings. The Marshall strode over to Mr. Assroth, his spurs clinking along the wide plank floors of the saloon. "Deal me in, if you know what's good for you in this town" he spat out his words, like he spat out tobacco juice into the spittoons at the end of the bar. "And if you don't" he added, "I'll make life hell for this little feller."
Miss Helen looked up from where she was doling out bourbon shots for the posse, "I hear, Marshall, that you can only join in the game when you ante up a goodly horde of gold boullion or something else of value." She smiled at him, and slipped the cash the posse proffered for the shots into the ample bosom of her bodice. Marshall Woods looked up at Miss Helen, and momentarily stopped polishing his little silver star. "I need an ante, you say?" And before anyone could say 'Darling Clementine', he'd drawn a gun on Mr. Assroth, "You hear that, Mr. Big? Miss Helen says I can join the game. So deal me in now! OR the little fella gets it between the eyes"
Mr. Assroth looked up calmly from his shuffling, "Let's see your ante." he drawled. Marshall Woods unlatched the safety, "I don't need an ante. Miss Helen said I could play" The Marshall clutched his gun tightly, sweat beading on his pudgly forehead. He had never shot a man, but he couldn't let that on. After all, what would his mother say if she found that he was yellow bellied.
He had never shot a man. But perhaps he could shoot a boy. You could have heard a tumbleweed roll through town, the saloon was so quiet. Old Rob looked up from playing the piano, and Doc Drayton paused in the nursing of both his shot of rockgut and his new nurse, Miss Ariela. Marshall Woods stuttered a bit, then caught his train of thought before it derailed. "If'n you don't deal me in, I'm a gonna have to send a telegram to Cincinnati to speak directly with the manufacturer of them there Bicycle cards." Marshall lifted his eyebrow, "I think you're usin a marked deck and they need to be informed."
Miss Helen began to chuckle behind the bar, "And YOU, Miss Helen! I think the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms would like to take a look at what you're stocking. Wouldn't do to have them find out you're watering down the bourbon. But of course, if'n you'll deal me in, friendly-like, I'll just turn a blind eye to your shenanigans. Wouldn't do to put you all behind bars." The Marshall motioned to his deputy Ben Gwynn, "Can you go and feed my mount, deputy? You know how I like to keep Fiona's tail all nice and fluffy like, and if she doesn't get her vittles, it'll start to droop." He turned back to Mr. Assroth, "So, mister, are you gonna deal me in, or are things gonna get nasty?"
Deadeye Dave looked away from his cards towards the Marshall and rolled his eyes, "The day you get in on our game is the day that I take a shinin' to eatin' eggs for breakfast...and I'd rather eat my sister than let an egg pass by these lips."
The tension was cut by the saloon doors swinging open again, as Topgun Tahirah strode in, and took her customary seat at the gaming table. She tossed her stetson onto the hook on the bar, and shook out her perfect hair, letting the raven cascades taunt the shivering Marshall, who could never arrest her, though she was on the top of all the Most Wanted lists. Drayton says "Or she could be the bartender's daughter."
"Deal me in." was all she said, and the game started up again, as if the Marshall wasn't standing there, gun drawn and cocked.
Marshall sputtered, "Are you ignoring me!??!!?"
Mr. Assroth glared at the Marshall, "Perhaps you should wander on out to the cemetery and take a look at the fresh dirt and the name attached. Cussin' Cass was good with hoardin his money...a little too good. See what happens when someone crosses us...you could be next."
"Oh, fudge", Mary cried as her roadster sputtered to the curbside. "My radiator is leaking", the attractive slender young woman realized, "and I'll never get to the hop in time to meet Stan!". Mary had to get to the hop, see, because Stan, one of the grooviest guys at Bayside, was like a totally crucial witness in the upcoming Becky Saladucci case. Becky, who was like this totally bad hitperson, was being tried for the murder of Mr. Liddy, who was this totally cool English teacher, or so everybody thought, that is, until he failed Tracy "Scarface" Johansen, one of the most feared members of the cheerleader mafia. Because Becky had taken out the hit thirty minutes after school, nobody had been there to witness, except, of course, Stan, who was this like totally hunky babe-o-rama who had planned on asking Becky to the junior prom. Well, he totally changed his mind after that, but he didn't come forward about the whole thing until after Mary had taken the case.
Mary, a lawyer in the teen court where such school issues are decided, was really having a pretty hard time getting together evidence. She felt totally rejected. She was afraid that it might be because, out of everybody in the 10th grade, she was the only one who still wore a training bra. Her mom said that it was because she was a late bloomer, but she still felt inadequate. She really wished those hormones would kick into gear. Anyway, here she was, Mary the skinny little geek, trying to take on one of the most feared people in Bayside High, and she had to do it alone. She figured that Stan had agreed to be her witness because he felt sorry for her. Nobody could like somebody as ugly as her.
Anyway, she was trying to get to the Hop, where they had agreed to meet, so that then they could discuss the court strategies over a milkshake. She had been pensive about meeting in such a public place when it was all over the girl's bathroom that he was going to testify against Becky, but he had laughed it off. But, just a few minutes before, Mary had received an anonymous phone call, saying that the bad guys knew where Stan was going to be, and they were going to take out a hit on him! And now, she wasn't going to be there to help!
She knew, as the sand-laden wind swept a tumbleweed over the trunk of
her '79 Nova, that Eduardo would not come back. He had gotten on his spaceship to fly to new frontiers, no lands, to seek truth, to boldly go where no man would go before, and where she knew she could never follow. Sighing the forlorn sigh of one who has lost her one true love, she went over in her mind the torrid affair of the past few days. She had been driving along the old, abandoned highway, praying that her Nova would not live up to its name, (in Spanish, No Va means "It does not go.") when suddenly, a bright light filled the sky in front of her.
Everything went dark. When she awoke, she was on the set of a bad science fiction B movie. Men wearing purple suits with green faces and antennae were watching her curiously. "We are 50s science fiction B movie space aliens," said one to her. "We seek to destroy you pathetic humans because of your unpredictable emotions."
But she wasn't listening to that alien. She was busy looking at the alien right behind him, an alien whose skin was a swarthy olive. He was a statuesque god, even his antennae rippled with muscles, and she knew that this was a man with whom she'd like to make a close encounter of the Third Kind.
"See! Not only do you lust after Eduardo," the alien said, "But in your thoughts you use movie titles to make sexual references. This is something we must wipe out from the universe completely."
"Wait," said Eduardo in a husky Venusian accent, eyeing her 400 lb body with a fire in his eyes that, if it were in a barbecue, would burn a whole package of frozen hot dogs to a crisp and cause the park ranger to call in planes to dump water on it, "we must not destroy her. Not yet. She has inspired in me something I have not felt since..." he looked at the other alien. "I must... examine her. You must allow me to study her alone," he said.
She didn't remember exactly when the cheesy porno music started, only the impression that it was some of the most beautiful sounds to come out of a synthesizer that she had ever heard.
Flicking her cigarette contemptuously and tossing her thick mane of
hair, Thyla adjusted the straps of her halter top and barked with her
trademark raucous, sneering laughter - laughter known to have unmanned many
a suitor. The sun was high over the trailor park. Thyla was glad she was able to use her unmanning laughter to her benefit - she received free air conditioning. This was not necessarily a good thing, seeing as it was December. But Thyla
was moving on. Swampy Acres wasn't what it used to be. Not after...Cletus.
She had been 15 at the time, returning home from seeing her pappy in the county jail. Her brothers and cousins had been out front. They were fixin' to make yard bird. Since she was the only person in her singularly gene-pooled family who knew how to operate the oven with her sixth-grade reading level, she took over. She was preparing to dunk the bird in boiling water when she heard a yowl. "Bubba, you stop making a racket!" Thyla yelled, flicking her cigarette contemptuously and tossing her thick mane of hair. When the yowling continued, she looked over her hot-pink haltertop-strapped left shoulder to see the loveliest man in existence.
She blinked rapidly. Chunks of blue eyeshadow fell into her eye. "My lord, my eye!" she shrieked, flicking her cigarette contemptuously. The ashes fell into her other eye. Both began watering rapidly. She couldn't see what was happening, but the handsome man was approaching her rapidly with long strides. She felt one six-fingered hand on her shoulder. She felt a tingle like she were a mosquito flying into a bug zapper. When she opened her eyes again, she saw a mostly-clean handkerchief before her. Her eyes grazed over the label. Mostly-Kleen. Wow, he was handsome and rich! she thought. She looked up to see he still had most of his own teeth. He was relatively uncockeyed. One of them gazed into her face.
"Are you alright, my little honey-roasted peanut?" Thyla felt her heart turn over and her loins tremble. She was in love.
The author comments, "My god, this site was made in heaven. Or a really nice mental hospital. How long are your entries supposed to be?"
Toast Point spreads his arms wide. "As long as you can keep going! And you can always write more installments (and so can anyone else!)"
Was it chance, or destiny that had brought him to this point? Walter Tetedepoop's eyes glazed over as he stared blankly into the boiling mixture of poison that bubbled before him...daring him to but partake. His pupils dilated as the dangerous mixture moved ever closer to his trembling lips. In the back of his head, he could hear his mother calling to him...
"Walter, have you taken the dog out yet? You know what happens to Muffy when she has to hold it for too long!"
His rage increased with every echoing syllable. No, of course he hadn't taken the dog outside. What would the point be? Muffy was incapable of anything even as simple as the easing of her kidneys. She had been his first. Admittedly, Walter's dosages had been a wee bit off. Now, instead of a yappy sheltie, his mother's 'sweetums' was nothing more than a paperweight...and a very ugly one at that. Walter's sweat began to bead as he glanced over towards his desk where the dog sat. Staring. Staring. Staring with eyes that had seen unachievable pleasure, and not lived long enough to tell of it. "What if this happens to me?" Walter pondered. "What if my own bowels meld into one solid mass? What if all of my insides fuse into one dense blob of inactivity?" Gently, he put the glass down. He could not drink yet. More testing was needed.
His mother's voice screamed from the cellar, "Walter, have you seen my girdle?!? You know that I want to look good for Samuel when hecomes over with our delivery!"
Why must his mother have this infatuation with the pizza delivery boy? Why must she always invite him in for a drink? Why must she...wait! Why must she always invite him in for a drink?!?! An evil idea began to congeal in Walter's overworked undersexed brain...
Let the pizza boy come. And let him bring a loaded "meat-lovers" for his mother. He'd give her a whole new perspective on "hold the sausage".
It would be understandable, he thought, if the pizza boy resembled Fabio in any way other than in his name, but Bario looked more like a young Crypt Keeper than anything, and Walter imagined that the lad had already achieved the pinnacle of his employment success. Walter had much greater aspirations, and would be able to fulfill all his dreams as soon as his success with this 'Patented Pleasure Potion' was realized. He flicked an imagined speck off the lapel of his cheap polyester sports coat, wishing, oh wishing, for the day his mother would finally loosen the purse strings enough for him to wear REAL Armani suits.
Suddenly, from the hall closet, there came that familiar whine, 'Pet my cat, pet my cat', and Walter knew it was time to get moving, if he ever wanted to be rid of all the family ties that kept dragging him down. He sighed as he reached into the cupboard and withdrew the vacuum cleaner.
'Pet my cat, Pet my caaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....'
The noise suddenly ceased as an explosion of feathers spewed forth from the choking vacuum. Walter had no need for his mother's annoying parrot any longer. Although he had planned to hold the bird as a secondary source of testing, the incessant chattering and squawking which the beast provided was enough to drive any man crazy -- especially a man who wasn't far from his destination already.
Without warning, the door flung open and a woman of substantial girth and limited height burst into the room. Mrs. Tetedepoop, or Fiona as she liked to be called, was a bit less than a fine piece of work. True, she had been a participant in the Miss America pageant of 1946, but what she didn't tell her acquaintances is that she merely served as a 'gopher' to the eventual winner, Marilyn Buferd. The years had not been kind to Fiona, but then again, one reaps what one sows. Lifting her one good eye toward her son, she motioned towards the pile of feathers on the floor.
"That had better not be my best feather boa, Walter. You know, the one that I wore to the New Year's Gala in 1957? Did you know that I met Neil Armstrong there? He was so so handsome, that Neil. And do you know what he said to me? He said..."
Walter cringed as the words that he had heard so many times before again spouted out of his mother's mouth. Did she never tire of telling these stories over and over and over again? If only he could hold on to his sanity a few minutes more. Walter stared at his mother and the room began to spin round and round and round again. Perhaps he was overlooking the most obvious test subject of all. His mother did need some pleasure in her life, after all. Walter fumbled for the table where he had left the potion and just before he could offer his mother a drink to quench her parched palette, a knock came from the front door.
Bario...
'Tomatos? What've you done, Walter? Tomatos in the Maalox?' Fiona began, but as she spoke, she began to morph into something very un-Fiona-like. Walter could barely watch, but forced himself to witness the transformation for the sake of science and posterity.
Day dawned as it usually did, and Dot Org, eldest surviving child of the Org clan, emerged from her cave, tossed her untamed and rather filthy locks heedlessly over her shoulder, and made her way across the tundra where her family, undecided if they would be hunters or gatherers, had recently moved following the volcanic eruption that had obliterated their last abode, several of her younger siblings, and most of their immediate neighbors. Not that it mattered to Dot, for some disaster or another was continually happening, and she accepted it in a more or less cheerful sort of way since it relieved the tedium of day-to-day hand-to-mouth existence that characterized her lifestyle and gave her something to think about in an abstract kind of way since she couldn't yet put words to her thoughts. Had she language, she might have given words to her feeling, but she didn't, so she couldn't. The best she could do as she trudged along was emit a guttural sound that might have meant either "What a lovely day it is!" or "I'm tired of trudging mindlessly about this stupid tundra."
At any rate, hearing her verbal expression of something or another, her nameless chum from a neighboring clan crawled out from behind a rock and trudged along with her. They might have continued mindlessly trudging all day in the primitive manner that teenagers of all historical periods are often wont to do, had not they spied the freshly broken remnant of a mastodon tusk, a small puddle of not quite coagulated blood, and shreds of the hide that Dot -in a moment of astute perception - recognized as a portion of her immediate paternal ancestor's best apparel.
Dot pointed to the mastodon tracks that led away from the scene, and uttered another guttural sound that might have meant, "Uh-oh. It looks like Daddy might not return from work today!" or "Oh, look - a chance to solve a mystery!" Not having anything else on her agenda that day - or any other day, for that matter, Dot turned and started following the tracks. Her chum clutched at her and tried to pull her back, but Dot, proud of her tracking ability, persisted, and, in fact, dragged her chum for some few yards before her chum, realizing the futility of dissuading Dot from her date with destiny, desisted.
Dot Org, hee-hee-hee.
Polly Esther Peltdown omits thirty-seven incredibly boring chapters (leaving them to be written by those more patient than she) and writes the final paragraph of Dot Org, Paleolithic Teen Detective
Dot looked up at the mastodon; it looked down at her, eyeing her with the suspicion a beast used to being hunted has for the species that usually hunts it. Neither, not having the power of language, spoke, which was expected-the not speaking that is. Indeed, had either one spoke, the other would have been quite surprised. The staring not accomplishing anything, the huge beast lifted its right leg - or perhaps it was the left; the details are lost in history - and brought its right foot (or perhaps the left) soundly down upon Dot's head, squashing her into the semi-frozen tundra so that she resembled little more than a punctuation mark (had written language been invented, which it hadn't) - a mere period at the end of the brief sentence that was her short life. Thus Dot became one small insignificant speck in the unwritten saga of pre-history.
Toast Point bursts into tears and closes the novel with a sigh. "That was lovely!"