Coming down to one of these posts per two days, contingent on at least one person commenting on it or asking for another installment on an unrelated post.  Can you dig it?

Content Warnings:  Classism, Threats, Violence, Use of Guns, Use of Knives, Vicious Animal Attack, Murder Plans, Unethical Extreme Sadism, Animal Abuse, Bestiality Mention, Organized Crime, Chemical Abuse, Ableism Including the R-slur, Menacing Vibes, Mortal Despair, Life-Endangering Allergies, Slut-Shaming, Unpleasant Depiction of an Unhoused Person and Drug Addicts, Loss of Physical Autonomy.

This is it!  Peak edginess, and if you can deal with that, a bit that comes close to the peak of comedy in my creepy yarn.

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CENTENNIAL HILLS CONTINUES

by Bébé Mélange

Under a periwinkle sky, Nate dragged Snar into Mike’s property.  It was an abandoned drive-in theater.  Back when Mike was flush, he used to make money showing vintage porno on the big screens for freaks and jokers.  Now the lot was too lumpy and fucked up to drive on, looking more like a junkyard.  The snarls and barking of dogs accompanied the scene.

As they got out of the truck, an Ainavian communicator leapt out of the bushes and cracked Snar in the small of the back.  They were too messed up to notice.  Nate had been doing more coke, and in a fit of genius forced some between Snar’s cheek and maxillary keratin.  It was an effort to pacify them with the euphoria of hard drugs, but it just made them ill again.  They nearly asphyxiated at the effect on their throat, and stopped struggling just to keep him from doing it again.

Nate, Mike, and Barbie dragged Snar into the light, all the while Mike and Barbie joking about how Nate had become a pimp for aliens.  He gritted his teeth and bore it, but he took off his short-sleeved shirt and put it on over their lingerie girdle, hoping to cool the foolery.

Mike’s bald head was shaved clean and his white goatee was a crisp horizontal line on the bottom of his chin.  He was thick, with rolled sleeves and collar buttoned to the top, his tie tight like a TV pastor.  Barbie had a blonde wig and affected cowgirl style.  A perfect criminal couple – just to look at them you knew they never went down for shit.  Mike got to the point, grinding a fist into a palm for emphasis.  A few pale flood lights shone on his head as sharp as if it was clear water.

“You know how the closer to extinct somethin’ gets, the more somebody wants to personally kill it?  A blue morpho butterfly is worth more by weight than platinum, at least alive enough to where you can watch it die.”

“Man, fuck, I don’t wanna be the fucker that did that.”

“That’s what I’m here for, you penny ante retard.”

“I knocked out a Getty less than an hour ago, bitch.”

Barbie said, “But you do know you’re retarted?  Good.”

He didn’t have anything to say to that.  Mike went on.

“I got a guy who pays for rare animal fights and exotic bestiality shit.  One time he paid six mil to watch a baby giraffe suck off an okapi.”

“The fuck is an okapi?”

“Really hard to direct in a porno.  Focus, Nate.”

“Do you have any idea how much coke I’m on?”

“He wants to give ET a fighting chance.  Your alien versus a pit bull.”

“That’s no fight!  Smar jus’ got knocked out by a ninety pound furry!”

“ET gets a knife.  You get off the streets – for life if you play your cards right.”

“i got a place,” he barely enunciated.  Nate knew he was as good as homeless, evicted from every place he’d lived more than a week.  “Is it a big knife?”

Barbie smiled, dead as a tombstone.  “It’s a big knife.”

Snar didn’t like any of these characters, but it took all their energy to keep their airway open.  The eerie lot reminded them of the underside of a photovoltaic dish they’d seen on Ainav where three million tiny organisms a year went to die and nobody bothered to clean.  Nothing good could happen there, and their read of the situation didn’t take an expert in Earthling body language.  Make it quick.

“I gotta know how much.  No bullshit.  And I do NOT want to see this.”

“Barbie, take him to the office.  I’ll take the animal.”

“The fuck was that?,” Barbie asked.

“Barbie.”  Mike didn’t care.

“Just look’t like a cicada jumped on its side.  Never mind.  Shall we?”

She took Nate, an arm around his waist, toward a set of three ramshackle aluminum sided mobile homes, out past the nearest movie screen.  Mike kept Snar from following them with a firm hand on their arm.  Then he bent to look at their belt.

The collection belt had a growing assortment of useless items, which Snar was not paying much attention to.  It all looked like welded black garbage in the available light.  Mike poked at it for a moment, then shrugged and started dragging them by the arm.  The okapi deal was somebody else’s game and this was set to be his hottest score ever.  There was no point in delay.

The kennels were made out of chain link fences – front back and sides, tops and bottoms – lashed together with heavy wire.  To keep the dogs from injuring themselves before their time, the bottoms were filled with rotting cardboard and newspaper.  It smelled like an abandoned fertilizer plant.

So that’s what the smell was, Snar thought.  The dogs stirred and started barking, some before they even had their eyes open.  By the time they were all up on their feet, it was a staccato of the most hateful sounds Snar had ever heard from living things.

Mike took him to the edge of a ditch nine feet deep, the proportions of a swimming pool.  It was a movie set from a venture that never fully took shape, still serving that function in a different way than originally intended.

He lowered Snar into the pit like a sack of potatoes, and watched them collapse there, face down.  He regarded the alien very carefully, then whistled for its attention.

“Hey you!  Lissenup.  Look at me!”

Snar rolled over and looked up.

“See this?”  He dropped a bowie knife in the dirt between his boots.  “Bet you’d like to have it now, right?  Shit, I bet you’d like to off yourself before you find out what we got in mind for ya.  Wouldn’t you?”

Snar started slowly closing their eyes.  They were jarred open when the man barked, in impersonation of the beasts.

“You’ll get your chance, Independence Day.  But we got to let Cujo get the first lick in, or it won’t be worth squat.  Ya hear me?”  He stood up.  “Good boy.”  He strolled away.

The earthen floor of the pit was moist, recessed from the cruel desert sun during the day, just enough to not parch.  Snar felt the soil with their hands and dreamed of being able to suck the water from it.  They looked at their hand, the dirt, thought about how life is the same everywhere – always able to get worse.  The idea they could last the rest of their days on this world was a bad joke.  They wouldn’t live to see the next light cycle.

 

Another car honked at them as it blasted by.  Stay out of the road, dipshits.  But they couldn’t.  Rennie and Lita were hitchhiking out to Mike’s place.

“I can’t believe it.  I don’t want to believe it,” she said.

“I’m sorry, girl.  I’m sorry.  You know, it ain’t easy for a man, livin’ low like this.  People lookin’ down, when you’re supposed ta be strong, make your own way.  He got tested.  We all did.”

“What’s that mean, Rennie?  I’m lost.  All I can think about is… is what we did wrong.”

“That’s what it means.  We all messed up.  Now Smar’s out there at Mike’s.  That’s on all of us, even if it was Nate sold her ass out.”

“I get it, Rennie, I get it.  You’re a wise old soul.”

“Broken clock.  All I know is that I don’t know shit.  Hey,” he took her hand, much less grubby and disgusting than usual, and swept her into a kind embrace.  Unfortunately, his face was by her mop of hair, which retained a strong trace of its pre-shower fetor.

“Aw, Rennie!”

He knew she needed a squeeze, and maybe he did too.  “You’re doin’ your bes’.  Just take it easy, OK?”

As they parted, she looked up at him like this was a very different flavor of moment.  “Is this really happening?”  Her eyes were half closed, her lips parted.

“Naw, baby.”  He hugged her filthy head one time, in a big brother-ish way, and set her to his side.  “Let’s get that alien girl back.”

She only looked disappointed at that for a moment.  They had much bigger things to be miserable about.

 

The caregiver carried Olivia upstairs and Tmai followed, stealth rushing each turn just after they got them out of sight.  They stopped on the stairs, flattening theirself into the shadow of the upstairs hall light, listening.

The larger alien carried them to their room, from which Olivia had given them stolen clothes.  That meant they were out of sight, enough for them to get into the hall.  They were going to wait outside the door for a good moment to make some kind of move, when suddenly the caregiver stepped back out into the hall, and caught a full view of Tmai.

Kirsten was shocked, overwhelmed with a primal horror more profound than anything she had ever felt before.  Her body moved of its own accord, jerking steps backward until she slammed against the end of the hall.  Her breathing was broken – inhalation brought nothing, exhalation made weird little flute noises.

Tmai was also shocked, instead by the caregiver’s intense reaction to them, and took involuntary steps back.  Then they bowed low, offered the backs of their hands, almost touching the floor in contrition.

Kirsten caught her breath at last, barely stifling the urge to scream, and stood up.  She balled fists at her sides.  She couldn’t quite make words happen, her breath now ragged, lips trembling.  “What?  What are..?”

Tmai didn’t know what to say, and more importantly did not know how to say it.  They signed Bumbo and said, “Olibia,” pointed to theirself, signing and saying, “Tmai,” then pointed to her, before going back into the palms down contrite gesture, nodding, “Yes, yes,” very slightly.

Kirsten pointed to herself, signed and spoke, “Kirsten.  I am Olivia’s mother.”  Suddenly she yelped and jumped as Olivia rushed past her, to put an arm around the alien’s neck and sign frantically at her.

She couldn’t even read it, made some signs of her own.  “Olivia!  Don’t touch that alien!  It is dangerous!  Come back to me this instant.”  She spoke the words as well, becoming aware that the alien could – to some extent – understand both means of communication.

Olivia signed, “G-use is my friend.  I met her in the swimming pool.  I know we got in trouble but please don’t make her go away!”

The fact that the alien was a female, to her daughter’s perception, did make it seem less dangerous.  It seemed very contrite, wearing her pink hoodie and one of her few nice dresses.  Kirsten signed and said, “I won’t make her go away right now, if you just come over to me, please.  Please, baby girl.”

Olivia considered it, visibly frustrated, but relented.  “OK, mom.  But you have to let me explain everything!”

“Thank you, baby.”

They gestured and spoke, to the best of their abilities, trapped in that hall by the tense shock of discovery.  Kirsten got the idea at last.  Tmai needed to go to Las Vegas, to get something important – a piece of animated metal was pointing the way.

As the tension began to break, a new feeling replaced the horror in her heart.  Kirsten reached out her hand to Tmai.  Tmai mirrored the gesture, and then she was holding hands with the creature.  She couldn’t help but break into a smile, her eyes quavering, a tear racing down her cheek.  Aliens are real.  Just like they said.  Fucking anything is possible!  Praise Jesus.

 

The back half of the muddy pit ramped up to a way out, but was sealed off with a chain link fence.  Without even going through the fence, Snar could have used it to climb out of the pit, but was too feeble in the moment.  Thankfully the cocaine was wearing off, but being able to breathe clearly was less than half of Snar’s troubles.

They finally pushed theirself up to hands and knees, looked around at the pit.  Was there a puddle in a corner?  Anything to drink, potable or not?  Dry tendrils of some kind of rooted organisms protruded from the dirt.  Not too promising, but maybe the tendrils pulled water to some kind of a core or pod.  What was the more strenuous feat, climbing out of the pit, or digging barehanded through the desert earth?

They stumbled over to the dirt wall and feebly pawed at it for a few minutes before slumping, defeated.  As they lay there, something flew at them over the edge of the pit and they winced in alarm.

Tiny pieces of Ainavian metal zipped to their belt and pinged in place, stinging their belly.  They slumped their head.  Might as well be a garbage magnet, when you’re in a hole in the ground.

Somebody came down the ramp on the far side of the pit – that primped and vicious alien with shorn bare legs tucked into boots.  They were clearly annoyed with their labors, hauling a bag of equipment with them and muttering what Snar had learned are words of anger.

Barbie looked through the fence for the alien.  Didn’t want the freaky piece of shit to surprise her while she worked.  She startled a little when she saw it, but shook it off and resumed her task.

“Like I couldn’t handle the dogs my damn self.  Fuck you, Michael.”  She unzipped the bag to set up the camera.  She looked at the alien from time to time, just in case it changed its shit up, mutated into a final form like a video game, but it remained feeble.  “You’re ’bout to be a doggy chew, you stupid slut.”

Both the alien and Barbie jumped when the lights came on.  Banks of high power lights shone on the pit, increasing the local volume of the electric drone that filled the terrible place.  The two men came up to stand at the edge of the pit.  Nate was in a new shirt, ill fitting and breezy.

“Why is Nate wearing one of my good shirts, you motherfucker?”

“Barbara, my dear, just do your job.”

“I was cold, Barbie.”

“Shouldna given your shirt to your alien whore, retard.”

“Thank you, Barbie.”

Mike walked toward the dog kennel, leaving Nate alone at the edge of the pit.  He felt like saying something to Smar, but what could he say?  He wasn’t a sensei of knife-fighting, didn’t know about any doggy weak spots.  He was glad he didn’t have a good view of her big sad eyes.

A metal object the size of a small animal clipped past Nate’s foot and jumped into the pit, also making Smar wince.  Nate shook his head.  The moment was so odd, he chalked it up to the cocaine.

Down in the pit, Snar was nailed in the shoulder with a big chunk of metal, on its way down to the collection belt.  They moaned softly with the pain, rolled onto their side.  In anger they took off the collection belt, struggling with the clasps until they were free.  Then they saw it.  The garbage included some items of actual use.  The communicator!  And more.  They put the belt back on.

Mike reappeared on the other side of the pit, and Nate was thankful it wasn’t right next to him.  He was holding one of the horrible dogs on a chain.  With the other hand he held a length of broom handle, that he’d ruthlessly prod it with whenever it thought to attack him.  “We got lights, Barbie!  We got action!  Do we have camera?”  He shouted just barely loud enough to be heard over the snarls and barks of the pit bull.

“Give me one more minute!”

Snar didn’t wait.  They shot at Mike with the Ainavian gun.  A slug entered the chamber and violently flashed to gas, powering the kinetic plasma bolt.  VWOOB, the brilliantly glowing shot hit the man in the upper thigh.

He lost the stick, lost the dog’s chain, and immediately the deranged beast tore into his face and neck with savage jaws.  Nate backpedaled until he hit a pile of tires, then ran around a corner.

Barbie jumped and lost track of what she was doing with the camera.  The alien pointed some kind of gun through the fence at her with one hand, and a finger with the other.

“Smar out!,” it said.

She turned to run, but a searing bolt hit the dirt in front of her.  She changed directions, but one hit the ground on the other side.  She stopped and slowly turned to face the enraged creature.  “Alright,” she said, barely audible over the sound of Mike’s terrible ongoing death, “What do you want?”

“Smar out.”  It gestured for her to come closer.

She came over to the fence.  “I guess I could throw down a ladder, but there’s no gate on this thing.”

The alien pulled the gun out of the opening of the fence, then raised it to point more directly at her chest.  “Smar out.”

Barbie grabbed her head in thought.  What the hell to do?  Then she remembered the multi-tool in her back pocket.  It had snips, right?  She pulled it out and showed it to the alien.  “See, whore?  Just a tool.  It’s a tool.  I’ll do it.  I’m doing it.”

Mike screamed again, up on the side of the pool.  He was a large enough man to have a fighting chance against a murder dog, but lost the upper hand.  Now his physical advantages could do nothing but prolong the inevitable.

She winced at knowledge of the horror unfolding up there – so close – and went to the edge of the fence.  There she methodically snipped the chain link where it was closest to the sites that it was embedded in the dirt.  The alien didn’t want to crawl out, waited for her to snip all the way up.  The fence rolled away and the creature stepped through to face her more directly, gun still raised.

Snar gestured for her to go where they’d just come from, to the prisoner’s side of the fence.  Of course they couldn’t rebutton the fence, so they just kept pointing the gun at her until they had gotten up the ramp and out of the pit.

They stood at the edge of the pit, heavy chunk of metal in hand, suddenly more powerful than they’d been since landing on this hell planet.  They looked all the way to the opposite end of the pool.  The man and the beast were just a pile of horrid meat and blood, thrashing and bargling.  The doctor let their oath of office go unfulfilled, and walked away.

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Peak edginess has now passed!  There’s still some grimness ahead, but Mike and Barbie were just the worst.  Mike was inspired a bit by this guy and Barbie was inspired by my sister, although there are many differences in the particulars.  Call it their animus.  Anyway, no more animal abuse and alien snuff and sex abuse.  It’ll be peace and good and brotherhood and crystal blue persuasion.

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