plaidphantom.net

Here's three more mini-stories. Two are based on Box-O-Doom prompts, the other was a group thing where we all wrote zombie romances (or something like that).

• Person: A goon
• Place: A basement
• Situation: riding a train
• Thing: a handkerchief
• Note: This actually gave me an idea for a series of probably short stories about a supervillain therapist.

I climbed the steps leading up to Doctor Evil's mountain fortress. I'd battled with him before, which gave me a small amount of courage as I braved the ever-smoking vents of the volcano on which his latest lair had been founded. The Doctor, however, was notoriously clever in his traps, so I was careful to keep an eye out for any weak stones that might constitute a fiendish trap.

I reached the door of the fortress, unsure of what to do next. I had tried to come up with some clever method of entry, but it was hard to plan when all of my spies had been fed to Doctor Evil's laser gorillas. To my surprise, the door swung open as I approached, leaving me with little choice but to enter in.

Inside was a single staircase, leading down into the depths of the mountain. I followed it, the scent of sulfur growing stronger as I descended. Eventually it widened into a cavern, where I was surprised to see a small train track. On the track sat a colorful miniature train, the sort one sees in shopping malls at Christmas. In the engineer position sat a rather large grunt in a comically anachronistic conductor's uniform who was obstinantly sulking, spitting the occasional profanity. He heard me approaching, and I stopped as he turned toward me. He pulled a handkerchief out from a breast pocket and wiped his sweating forehead.

"You dat hero guy?" he grunted in a thick Brooklyn accent. "That, um...hrm..."

"Smith." I cautiously offered. "Nevada Smith."

He smiled slightly. "Yeah! Dat's it. Smith." The goon scowled again. "You goin' down?"

"Um, I suppose."

He motioned toward the end of the train, about four cars down. "All aboard," he said, rolling his eyes. I trepidatiously climbed into the train, and the goon pressed a large, friendly-looking green button which caused the train to to lurch forward at a rather safe speed.

We rode for a few minutes, the goon simply sulking as the train worked its way through the mountain. "So," I said, "This is certainly not what I expected."

The goon grunted. "Yeah. Da Doc's lost it for good. One day he was building a giant death ray, the next he's making us build stupid carnival rides in da lair." He spat on the ground in disgust. "Pretty shameful for a supervillain, if you's to ask me."

I nodded. It was often the unstable ones who took to mad science, and Doctor Evil was one of the most unstable villains I'd met.

The train emerged into a large cavern with numerous tropical plants fed by steam from sea water being pumped over bare lava. It was an eerie jungle effect.

"Ah, Doctor Smith!" I heard an unsettlingly bouncy voice from behind me. I turned to see Doctor Evil, who had traded his usual black-and-red cloaked ensemble with a surprisingly...pink...outfit that was remarkably absent of spikes.

"Um, Doctor Evil?"

"Oh, please, it's Gerald now. And this is my wonderful lair! Isn't it scrumptious?"

I eyed him warily. When supervillains used the word 'scrumptious', it was rarely a good thing.

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• Person: Aardvark handler
• Place: bookstore
• Situation: driving
• Thing: a cheeseburger
• Note: It took me a while to come up with the idea for this, but I think the concept came out great.

Books flew in nearly every direction as the front of my yellow sports car burst through another bookshelf. I threw the wheel to the right, sliding sideways into a stack of old New Yorker issues.

"It'll be okay," I said, hopefully soothingly, to the terrified aardvark who was clinging to the bottom of the box in the seat beside me. "They won't get you. Not now."

I sped through the store's front into the parking lot, narrowly passing my pursuers at high speed. They twisted their Hummer around to chase after me, wiping out the building's one remaining glass pane in the process.

I swerved through traffic with the men close behind me, and I was nearly to the freeway when one of my tires burst under the pressure. My car spun in circles, and the goons behind me weren't quick enough to avoid a collision, and together we spun under an overpass and into the lot of a McDonald's, where a terrified tour group threw their food into the air an ran for the safety of their bus. My skidded to a stop along the side of the restaurant, while the Hummer ultimately rolled over, spinning its wheels like an upended turtle.

The driver and his companions crawled out from the vehicle, coughing from smoke that was starting to waft from the vehicle. As soon as they were a safe distance away, I kicked them to the ground and threw handcuffs on them.

"That's the last aardvark you train for your heists," I said.

The driver coughed and sputtered. "Who are you?"

"ASPCA," I said, "and you're under arrest." I grabbed one of the cheeseburgers on my car and took what I hoped was a really cool bite out of it as the Hummer exploded.

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Bob watched dejectedly as the occupants of the mall fled in terror. It had been a hard six months. After the visit from that voodoo witch doctor, things hadn't been the same. He tried to tell people that he really was still the same person he used to be, but it was an uphill battle after his vocal cords finally fell apart. Now, he was left with a low gurgling noise which made his cries of “please don't be afraid” sound more like “I want to eat your brains.” Which was a shame, as Bob really wasn't all that interested in brains. Sure, he'd bit a person or two, but lately he had been controlling his instincts fairly well.

Of course, there was that incident at the Dairy Queen. And that time at the park.

He tried not to think about that.

In any case, he shuffled over to the McDonald's to get a drink. As usual, the cashier screamed and fell faint to the ground. Bob rolled his eyes and reached his arm over the counter, grabbing a cup while narrowly avoiding the customer appreciation hatchet that the manager had pulled from under the coin thing. He went over the drink machine, clumsily pushed the Sprite button, and stepped into the court and was pulling out a chair to sit down when he noticed something odd: people were running towards him.

That was a new experience for Bob.

Of course, as soon as they saw him they piled into the Orange Julius and started climbing on the smoothie machine to reach the ceiling tiles, but they were clearly running toward him before that.

The crowd began to thin out, and Bob strained his neck to see what was driving them towards him. Behind the crowd he saw a figure plaintively reaching for the mallgoers. Finally he saw a familiar face, though it was much more pallid than he remembered.

"Julie?" he coughed. The girl turned toward Bob, her face lighting up as she recognized his face.

"Bob?" she growled, "I haven't seen you since high school!"

Bob thought for a moment, trying to understand what she had said, then motioned toward the seat across from him. "Would you like a drink?" he mumbled.

She nodded, shuffling rather quickly toward his table as he returned to the McDonald's. The manager had somewhere found a baseball bat, so Bob took a solid bite at his arm before stepping over to the drink machine.

Things were beginning to look up for Bob.