Chapter 1 - Hot
Tip
Tierra
Podrida, M Prefecture, The Union
THURSDAY, JULY 1, 2010
Lucius DeLuxe didn't need directions. The fire at Saint Basil's Cathedral
and Nightclub burnt itself out two days earlier, but the shell of the building
still smoldered, sending a black smoky beacon into the sky. The stink of stale
char carried on the warm breeze; the Knight in Satan's
Service had more than enough information to guide him towards his destination.
Lucius was clad in his
heavy black ceremonial robes, he would never dare sacrifice fealty to his
master in the name of personal comfort. His exposed skin, originally measured
to belong within the I Chantone range, was baked an illegal leathery tan. His hide's darkened hue
reflected some of the sun, but not nearly enough to
keep from breaking out in a sweat. It was a slow, hot ride. His refurbished
gray tractor lagged through the streets of Tierra Podrida, laboring to pull the
wheeled tar boiler behind. The farm vehicle and its encumbrance were ancient, likely dating to a time before the Eternally Free Taiwanese
took control of the colony, but Lucius was happy to have a ride of any kind. If
he was going to reclaim any of his lost glory, he needed a set of wheels. If
the information he was working with was correct, he'd
be getting glorious in no time.
He hadn't
ventured into M Prefecture since the days leading up to the war; it wasn't
quite as he remembered. His memory wasn't what it used
to be, but Tierra Podrida wasn't always barricaded with piles of rubble - he
knew that much for certain. A haphazardly stacked mini-mountain of broken
buildings blocked the road into town. Up and over was the only way in. It made
for a rough climb, one that wouldn't have been
possible if not for the tune-up Gretl performed on the slow chugging engine.
Things were different
inside the fortifications as well. The sad factory town that once showed some signs of life was inert, seemingly
deserted. The tractor grumbled and wheezed between the small cinderblock
and tin houses, kicking up dust along the dirt roads. No one paid him any mind.
Anyone unfortunate enough to still call this place home were either toiling
away in the Phase 2 Manufacturing Center or shacked up in their hovels, hiding
their illicit activities from the local authorities. Those counting on a plywood
door to keep the eyes of the Beat Cops off of their
secret vices had nothing to fear. Lucius knew something most of the townsfolk didn't. Tierra Podrida, and all of M Prefecture along with
it, was recently rendered lawless, ripe for the
plundering. Mr. DeLuxe was going shopping.
He wasn't sure what to
make of the heaps of appliances that marked the path to Saint Basil's. There
were plenty of them, differing in height, composition and teeteryness;
a stumpy, metal and plastic forest. Strange, but
inconsequential to the task at hand. Lucius wasn't in
the market for anything that wasn't wholly organic. He made a wide turn as he rumbled closer to his goal, too
wide. The tar boiler collided with a pile of blenders, knocking the stack over
with a clatter. If there was anyone inside the burnt out
warehouse-turned-house-of-worship-turned-dancehall, they didn't
seem to mind the commotion. No one stirred from within. He killed the engine
anyhow; something that lay en route to the Cathedral
caught his eye.
The dead man on the
ground wasn't much of a specimen, at least not the
parts that were visible. His body was bulbous, a nearly
spherical blob. Very unattractive. His limbs were long and spindly,
weak. Weakness wasn't going to work, not for what
Lucius had planned. His skin was heavily pockmarked. That wouldn't
do. And his head? Hard to tell, a smashed television sat where the man's head
should have been. That made Mr. DeLuxe's decision
easy.
Lucius was 57 years old.
He was also of the opinion that a man pushing 60 had
no business prying a bulky TV off of a squashed head. He'd
leave this guy; the real score was waiting inside Saint Basil's. Or so he
thought.
Jonathan Wright died in
Saint Basil's two days before the gray tractor rolled into town. His dreams had
died in Saint Basil's years earlier, but his body was slow to catch up. He had
once been tasked with awakening the Messiah-to-be in
the name of the Ashanti Orthodox. It would have been a tremendous holy honor,
had his mission been a success. Instead, he allowed the savior to slip away,
just as Innocent X had decades earlier. Wright didn't
respond well to the legacy of failure he shared with the last of the Roman
Catholic Popes. With his psyche twisted, he bartered his identity and his face
for an artificially extended rule over M Prefecture. It was a cruel reign, one
marked by fiendish edicts that spiraled beyond Wright's control and eventually
cost him his life. At least he managed to get his revenge. Clint Masters, the
almost-Messiah, the man who refused to righteously guide humanity, died in
Saint Basil's as well.
The corpses of both men
still rested on the light-up dance floor of the Cathedral slash Nightclub.
Clint lay in a vibrant blue puddle, bruised and broken, but not cut or
scratched. The damage was exclusively internal and it was heavy. The Black
Pope, as Jonathan Wright rechristened himself, lay shredded from pelvis to
crown. Clint had viciously obliterated his opponent's torso, but his own body gave
out on him before he had the chance to tear apart the Black Pope's arms and
legs. The giant limbs sprawled across the colorful floor tiles. They were still wrapped in the Black Pope's trademark white suit,
now blood-stained a pink-tinged brown. Two dead men; forever linked in their
shared futility. Their deeds were no longer important. Their powers, both
political and supernatural, were extinguished. All
that mattered now were their body parts. The parts belonging to Clint Masters
in particular.
Lucius DeLuxe didn't like what he saw as he forced open Saint Basil's
heavy double doors. An old dead white guy, most of an
old dead black guy and an extra set of white guy arms? This couldn't
be everything, could it? Where were the sexy-weird cop
ladies he'd been promised? After a quick search of the scorched building, the
only answer Lucius could come up with was 'not here'.
He wasn't going to leave empty handed, but he wasn't
going to leave happy either. These guys would do, barely.
First, he took the arms
that didn't seem to belong to a body. They were in the
best shape, young, blemish and bruise free. Plus they were light. The bruised
white guy was another story. Grumbling, Lucius dragged him out of the building
by his heels and hoisted him up into the tar boiler. Between the pair of arms
and this guy, at least he'd have good patching
supplies. On top of that, a quick check inside the bruised guy's trousers
revealed a decent sized member; good enough until a bigger one came along.
Lucius left the black guy on the
dance floor. He wanted to take the exotic north, a lewd display that would show
those brutespooks the kind of monsters their civil
war created. Up north, black guys were far from exotic. Besides, the remains of
his body were a bloody mess. Lucius' robe, caked in a generous layer of desert
dust, was already grubby enough. No need to further ruin his only change of
clothes by picking up scrap parts he wouldn't use.
The trip out to M was
looking like a bust, a big waste of gasoline and a bigger waste of time. His
deadline was looming and this setback went and pissed
all over the timetable he was working with. Mr. DeLuxe was left without option;
he'd have to have a word with the source of his faulty
intel. It was going to be an unkind word, followed by some
unkind deeds.
The Pervert's
pornography withdrawal wasn't going well. After years
and years of non-stop hardcore sex blaring at him from his wall of TVs, the
lack of thrusting, moaning, licking and squirting was
too much to handle. Within a day of trading his televisions for his favorite
performer's prized part, he couldn't take it any
longer. He needed to watch again and he needed it bad.
He turned to the
outmoded erotica of his youth to try and get his fix. 'Throbbing Throatfuls'
was a mimeographed porn rag; incredibly popular amongst M Prefecture's smut
fanciers until the overwhelming success of Clint Masters' underground video
operation put it out of print. The Pervert had a copy of every issue.
Rooting through the
closet to retrieve his stacks of blotchy, purple-blue lewdness was a slow,
laborious affair. The Pervert's right eye had swollen completely shut, thanks
to the beating he'd endured at the hands of Billy
Lopez. What he could see out of the left eye was fuzzy, and that was only if he
really focused. Focusing made his head hurt, or maybe it
was the severe concussion. Brain trauma or no, The Pervert pressed on. The
nausea wore off once he found the magazines buried beneath the pile of
never-laundered jockey shorts. His sweating subsided, the tremors died down.
'Throbbing Throatfuls' was crude, both in content and in manufacture. Page
after poorly laid-out page of illustrated sex acts that verged on the
physically impossible. Typewritten text that was exceptionally vulgar in
content and unintentionally offensive to spelling purists. Just what The
Pervert needed.
The magazines scratched
the itch, and then scratched it twice more over the course of the afternoon,
but the relief didn't stick. The Pervert's deviancy
ran deep and his whims were fickle. Hell, the gratification he derived from
replacing his lips with labia scarcely lasted 24 hours. The novelty of the
crinkled, old porno mags never stood a chance to satisfy in the long-term.
The tapes The Pervert
once dubbed for Clint were effectively 'keep your hands to yourself' private
sex exhibitions. They brought the viewer's eyes and ears to the brink of actually engaging in sex acts; acts the men of M Prefecture
had been denied by a genetic poison developed overseas. Most static images just
couldn't compare to the majestic fantasy conjured by
motion pictures and accompanying audio. But there was one image, tucked away on
a back page of the December '76 issue, silent and immobile, that kicked The
Pervert's imagination into high gear.
It was an advertisement,
small and text only. Mr. DeLuxe's
Traveling Pleasure Show, it read. Live
Sex Shows! Delivered to your home or place of busine-
The Pervert didn't bother to read anything else aside from the phone
number listed at the bottom. The ad was decades old and the line was likely dead, but The Pervert wasn't about to let logic stomp
on his excitement. Stubby fingers flew around his phone's rotary dial. When he
heard a ring on the other end, those fingers clenched into a fist and flailed
against the air in triumph.
The woman who answered
seemed taken aback as The Pervert croaked "Traveling Pleasure Show!" through
the speaker surgically embedded in his neck. She claimed no one had asked for
that particular service in years. After another
robotic "Traveling Pleasure Show!" demand, she offered to see if she could get in touch with Mr. DeLuxe and placed The Pervert on hold.
Unfamiliar with the concept of hold music, The Pervert continued to bleat
"Traveling Pleasure Show!" over the smoothest of jazzes until a man's deep
voice cut him off.
"Yeah, I do those. Shut
up and listen."
Mr. DeLuxe made his
demands clear. A visit from his Traveling Pleasure Show wouldn't
come cheap; one woman was the asking price. Drugged. Hypnotized. Bound and
gagged. Terminally ill. Freshly dead. In some sort of
suspended animation. Even if she was the unlikely combination of willing
and able; the state she was in didn't matter so long
as she was post-pubescent, pre-menopausal, and as pale as possible.
The Pervert couldn't pay Mr. DeLuxe's fee, not
directly. He made an offer, nonetheless. With his mind still addled from the
painkillers that accompanied his surgery, he thought he was offering an
incredible tip in exchange for a private show, he really did. While he couldn't personally provide a woman, he could give
directions to a spot where Mr. DeLuxe could find three of them. He had nothing concrete to back his claim and
his powers of deduction were a little loopy, but even so, it all made so much
sense.
He knew Mona was dead,
proof of that sat under his nose. He knew enough about Tierra Podrida's sexual
underground to know that if Mona was dead the Beat Cops likely
had something to do with it. He knew Mr. Lopez came by to smash up his
face just for being on the receiving end of the Mona parts auction, so he had a pretty good idea that whoever left Mona in a state where
she could be sold piece by piece was plenty dead.
Beat Cops Angry, Mona
Dead. Mona Dead, Mr. Lopez Angry. Mr. Lopez Angry, Beat Cops Dead. Simple.
Add in the weird fire
that came out of Mr. Lopez' body once The Pervert's blood started to gush and
all the pieces fell into place. The Beat Cops were goners and their super sexy
bodies were left lying somewhere off in the distance,
wherever that big fire was burning. Sure, The Pervert's information was dead
wrong, but it all made for a convincing enough tale to lure Mr. DeLuxe out to
M. What a pity.
As he made his way out
to Tierra Podrida, Lucius took stock of the task ahead. Performing for The
Pervert wasn't going to be easy. His new ride wasn't anywhere near show-ready, live performers were out of
the question, and when he secured the
bodies of the Beat Cops, he wouldn't have any piston men to mount them on.
None of that was a
concern any longer. The slimy little prick got Lucius' hopes up, way up. Now
that the harsh light of truth had shined on Lucius' eyes, well, he was far from
pleased.
215 Progress Avenue's
door, already broken and flimsily taped back into place, crumpled inwards. The
small house was filthy, but stripped nearly bare. The
minimalist decor drew instant attention to The Pervert, a beady-eyed little
weasel clad in jockey shorts and a mint-green robe, writhing in anticipation in
his swivel chair. Mr. DeLuxe wasn't surprised to see
The Pervert's tiny atrophied limbs; he'd heard rumors that mutation was the
norm among those who still lived in M Prefecture. But, the prettiest pussy
Lucius had ever seen sitting where The Pervert's mouth should have been? Now that was a surprise, one that nearly made his trip out to
this Godforsaken place worthwhile. Murder was still on the menu, but now there
was going to be surgery for dessert. Lucius DeLuxe took his payment for the
mostly wasted journey in the form of vicious, violent retribution. Armed with
indignation, bloodlust and a ceremonial dagger, he
painted the shack's white walls red. Mr. DeLuxe left #215 with a pristine sex
organ in hand and a smile on his face. Glorious.
Chapter 2 - Come
Again
Tierra
Podrida, M Prefecture, The Union
TUESDAY, JUNE 29, 2010
Billy Lopez lost both of
his arms in the fight that started the fire and he lost a lot
of blood along with them. He would have been another corpse on the
Cathedral's dance floor if he hadn't been able to
stumble out of the inferno to find Doctor Timothy. She saw to putting Billy
under. The shock to his system was too great to manage without letting him
lapse into an assisted coma. There was plenty of his
blood type on hand in the bank vault, what remained of Billy would survive.
Doctor relished the
opportunity to nurse him back to health. He couldn't
leave her while he was asleep and he wouldn't leave her once he awoke. His
intense, loving gratitude would cement their romantic bond. The patient and
doctor relationship they shared would blossom into one between beau and beloved
and then, eventually, between man and wife. At least, that's how it played out in Doctor's mind. Reality didn't quite jive with Doctor's romantic notions.
She was a brilliant
surgeon, but one saddled with the difficulties of being a severely mutated 14
year old girl. Her bald, veiny head was far too large for her scrawny,
underdeveloped body; if it wasn't for the support of
the metal lattice framework affixed to her shoulders the weight of her hefty
cranium would have made it impossible to stand upright. Mutation wasn't her only trait of note; her emotional development was
stunted and snarled far beyond her physical. She had lived an odd life, even by
M Prefecture standards, and she had a collection of unusual idiosyncrasies to
prove it.
Her upbringing left her
hopelessly ignorant of the world at large. As the last girl born in M
Prefecture, Doctor was unfortunately rare. At best, she would have been subject
to a lifetime of unwanted sexual advances, at worst, she would have been converted into a mindless sex-officer and pressed into
service under the Black Pope. Her father spared her from either outcome,
keeping her existence a closely guarded secret. Up until Doctor's misadventure
with Billy, she had never set foot outside of her inherited operating room.
The O.R. housed deep
within Tierra Podrida Savings and Loan's vault wasn't
the only thing handed down between generations. Before he died, Doctor's father
gave her incredible insight into the field of experimental medicine. That was
nice of him. He also gave her his title as a first name and replaced her vocal
chords with his own so she could surreptitiously carry on
his legacy behind closed doors. That wasn't
particularly nice. In addition to his voice, professional moniker and surgical
prowess, Dr. Timothy also gave his daughter a 34
volume set of 'LaRue's Longing'. She pored over the series of smutty romance
novels from an early age, committing them to memory and permanently warping her
notions of love and affection in the process.
Billy wasn't
a fan of Doctor's appearance or her voice, but he could happily overlook both
if it weren't for her aggressive lust. Being forced
into a life-saving coma was a pleasant reprieve from her non-stop wang pursuit.