Splatterpunk's Not Dead Page 4

  He finished up the can and crushed it in his hand. He'd had the strength for such a feat before, but today it just felt like a more powerful can crushing.

  He let out the mightiest belch of his life and said "I think—"

  Charlie punched him in the face, knocking him to the floor.

  "Why'd you do that?" Malcolm wailed.

  "You said that you thought you were going to refuse to replace the can of Rocketship that you drank!"

  "No, I didn't! All I said was 'I think'!"

  "And what you thought was that you were going to refuse to replace the can of Rocketship that you drank! You lied to me! And now we'll have the Hitler problem to deal with!"

  Malcolm got back up. Energy coursed through his veins. Except for the fact that his face hurt, he'd never felt better in his life.

  "I am the most powerful human being in the world!" Malcolm shouted at the heavens, raising his arms into the air.

  There was an awkward moment of silence.

  "Did you really just shout that you're the most powerful human being in the world?" asked Charlie.

  "Uh, yeah."

  "You're not, you know."

  "I feel like I am."

  "But you're not. I mean, Rocketship makes me feel good, too, but there are professional athletes who train their entire lives to be in prime physical condition. You're not even top ten. Probably not even top twenty."

  "Power doesn't necessarily have to be related to physical prowess."

  "So you think you're more powerful than the President of the United States? You think you're more powerful than a mad scientist who has acquired the ingredients to make an atomic bomb? You think you're more powerful than high-ranking employees at Disney? Give me a break."

  Malcolm punched Charlie in the face. Not only was the blow powerful enough to break Charlie's neck, but it had sufficient strength to pop his head completely off.

  He really hadn't intended to do that. In the future, he'd have to be more careful when he punched somebody.

  He'd never seen somebody with a missing head before, and the visual image was unsightly enough that Malcolm almost forgot to take the other cans of Rocketship out of the refrigerator before he left.

  On the way out, he accidentally bumped into the mailman. Under normal circumstances, the mailman was totally fine with the occasional accidental bump, as long as the person who'd bumped him offered up a casual apology, but he'd just finished a can of Rocketship and his level of energy was so high that he knew he didn't have to be nice about people bumping into him. He punched Malcolm in the face, knocking off his head.

  Then he felt bad about it.

  And so it began. The world was filled with millions of consumers who had such high energy levels that they could knock people's heads off with a single well-placed punch. Granted, not all of them used their energy for decapitation. There were thousands of recorded incidents of arms being yanked off during handshakes, and people with fist-sized holes in their torsos, and buttocks being kicked completely off.

  It was a dangerous time.

  Stores couldn't keep Rocketship on the shelves. Almost everybody wanted the rush of energy, and even those who'd turned up their nose and said "I don't drink sugary carbonated beverages" in a snotty manner realized that they needed Rocketship in order to compete.

  The world's population decreased by about fifty percent within two weeks. Rocketship also boosted one's libido, so humanity assumed that the population could be replenished, but still, everyone pretty much agreed that the deaths were out of control.

  Congress tried to enact legislation banning the beverage, but a sneaky attempt to pass the bill with a clause saying that Rocketship was banned for everybody except members of Congress was noticed by a liberal radio show host, and public outcry was so intense that the government dropped the issue and just asked people to make a reasonable attempt not to knock anybody's head off.

  Three months after the tragic demise of Malcolm and Charlie, the population had been reduced to about ten percent of its former quantity. And that's when a scientist discovered the secret ingredient in Rocketship.

  "It's Martian blood!" he shouted. "It's Martian blood!"

  Because nobody was in the room with him, he hurried out to someplace where other people could hear him shout. "It's Martian blood!" he shouted. "It's Martian blood!"

  Humanity was outraged. Nowhere in the ingredients list was "Martian blood" listed.

  "This is unacceptable!" said the President of the United States in an address to the nation. "Nobody would drink Martian blood if they knew beforehand that what they were drinking was Martian blood, and this revelation may very well explain why this drink has cost so many human lives."

  The manufacturers of Rocketship insisted that the scientist's findings were untrue. Humanity responded to this denial by getting extremely mad at the scientist, but days later the scientist, who was very ambitious, acquired a video of hundreds of green aliens being squashed in steel machines. Their blood was collected in large tubs, which fed to long tubes, which allocated one drop of Martian blood in each can of Rocketship.

  There were a lot of Martians who had not been squashed, and they'd been wondering what happened to their friends, and once this news broke they launched an all-out attack on planet Earth. Unfortunately, though there were only maybe ten earthlings who knew about the Rocketship secret, the Martians blamed everybody without green skin.

  The remaining ten percent of humanity dropped down to eight, and then five, and then two. After that, the Martians decided that humanity had learned its lesson and returned to their home planet of Martia.

  Though the survivors were sad about what happened to everybody else, it did mean that there was plenty of Rocketship left, so they chugged as much as they wanted. The two percent dropped to one and down to one-half, until only about sixty-three humans remained.

  One of them was a serial killer who'd never tried Rocketship, and he knocked the population down to forty.

  Then came the flu.

  So it was all a great tragedy, except in the life of Milton Tylerson, who was now one of four remaining humans, and the other three were women. He thought things had worked out in a rather awesome manner.

  Doctors had told him that he'd never be able to have children, but he kept that information to himself, and lived the rest of his very happy life claiming to be the savior of humanity's future.

  Eggbeater

  Saul Bailey

  My given name’s Dale Earle Ray, but I been Eggbeater or Egg for short my whole life, on account of how I’s got an eggbeater in place of my cock.

  None of my brother’s got any malformations of any type, apart from Buck’s squint, but the story behind that was he caught a two by four upside the head for whistling at the Gershaw twins outside the store one time. I’s too scared to ask him, but it sounds plausible – he did like to whistle at the pretty girls, and them twins was pretty as a picture, back in the day. And they’s daddy was a real protective man.

  Anyways. So I got eight brothers – Buck, Bob, Huck, Hank, Danny and Donny the twins, Jake and Sammy. I was lucky number nine. After me, mama went and got her tubes tied at that new place that opened up – said nine was enough for any woman, and anyway with how I’d turned out, it was like God was tryin’ to tell her somethin’ or somethin’.

  She said I come out that way. I seen the Polaroid. Mama holdin’ me, little metal thing where my pee-pee shoulda been. The picture hung on the fridge for years, under the Mountain Dew fridge magnet. Thought it was still there, but it ain’t. Musta got so used to seein’ it, I kept seein’ it even after it was gone. Amazin’ what the mind can do.

  Anyways.

  Mama told me we had to keep it secret – said folks wouldn’t understand, might make fun, maybe even take me away. I saw how mean the kids were about Joey from the park with his club foot, figured she was right. Of course, my brothers took right on to calling me Eggbeater or just plain old Egg, but lots of folks around these part
s got peculiar nicknames, and nobody ever asked me how I came by mine. The whisk grew right along with me, pretty well in proportion. I can pee through it just fine – there’s a hole at the end, right in the middle, opens when I need to go and is closed the rest of the time. My nuts are a little odd too, kinda set back and misshapen, but they don’t give me no pain, and mama says that’s a blessin’ and I guess she’s right.

  She birthed me in the trailer herself, just like all my brothers, so there was no reason for anyone to know, I guess. Anyone outside, I mean. Mama used to joke my daddy must have been a French baker, but I don’t think she really knew for sure and I never did either and to be honest I’ve never really worried about it. Mama raised us all good, and Buck, Bob, Huck, Hank, Danny, Donny, Jake and Sammy all looked out for me too, in their own ways. Taught me how to fight, shoot, fish. Swim too. They all knew about me o'course, but they never said nothin’ mean, even when they got to raggin’ on me sometimes. It was always my hair or my buck teeth. Never the other. They was good like that, my kin.

  Anyways.

  We grew up good together. As I got older, though, I started to get problems. I developed young, and around the time I’s startin’ to get zits and stinky armpits, I started getting strange feelings around baking. Mama never baked at home, but old Lisa-May across the way did. Her old man Dan had a for-real job – he fixed trucks for a living. Went out every day in a uniform and everything, and old Lisa-May’d wave him off and then shut the trailer door, and after a few minutes the sweet smell of baking bread or pie or cakes’d waft out her window.

  I mean to say, I’d always liked the smell of baking, I guess – who doesn’t? But this summer, I felt it started doing something... peculiar to me. My recollection is the feelings came first, but I couldn’t swear to it. Either way, right around then, my Johnson developed in a most alarming manner.

  What I mean to say is, a single beater, all I’d ever had and Lord knows all I’d ever needed, had somehow become two. The two sets of blades were interlocked, like them fancy ones you seem the TV chefs use. I mean, overnight this happened.

  I didn’t know what to do. I’d always worn my pants baggy, but even so this made life awkward. I had to talk to mama about it, and it was so embarrassing havin’ to show her, but she was good enough about it, just sighed and said I was God’s own private mystery, which she liked to say a lot about me, and then she bought me back sweatpants from the goodwill that were way too big but at least did something to disguise the bulge a bit.

  But Lord, the baking became torture! Every time I walked by that open trailer window, I’d smell that fine smell, and feel a painful swelling in my pants. Got so I could barely walk right, would have to go sit in the shade and try and think about other things – for some reason, bicycles’d always do it in the end, just picturing them as clear as I could would make that swelling ease off, get the whisk back down to manageable size.

  Still, the situation was becoming intolerable, and finally I realised I was just gonna have to take one big dumb ole risk. So this morning I did: I waited ‘till Dan had left for the days work, and I just marched up to Lisa-May’s door bold as brass and knocked on the screen door, hard enough to make it rattle.

  Lisa-May came to the door, opened it. “Can I help you, sweetheart?” She was a good lookin’ woman, Lisa-May, I mean old, you know, maybe thirty or so, but she always took care of herself. She had her long black hair twisted up and held with a pencil, looked like. I could see small black moles on her neck, just a couple. They looked lovely on her pale skin. Had her face fixed up pretty too, just a little makeup, none of what my mother sometimes called ‘tramp warpaint’.

  I licked my lips, feelin’ shy, but spoke up loud and clear. “Well, mam, I was wonderin’ if you were plannin’ on doing some of your bakin' this fine morning?”

  She put her hands on her hips then, rocked back on her feet a little. I could see she was tryin’ to take the measure of me. I looked back, at the white tank-top she had on, a little tight around her bazookers, and I realised I could see a black bra underneath. She had a full figure, you know – not fat, but… curvy. Cuddly, I guess. She wore it well, is what I’m tryin’ to say.

  Anyways.

  She looked me up and down, and eventually said ‘Why yes I am, young man, but may I ask what business is it of yours?” She said it cool, but not stuck up or angry. I think like she was really curious, you know. So I says, like I practiced, “Well, m’am, I’d really like it if maybe you could teach me how.”

  There was another long silence. I could see her thinking about it. I felt nervous in case she said no and excited in case she said yes but also I felt calm, somehow, because she seemed kind and I’d asked the way I’d wanted to ask, and I guess that doesn’t make much sense but that’s how I remember it.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  “Egg, mam.”

  “Egg’s what they call you. What’s your name?”

  “I’m Dale Earle Ray, mam.”

  “And Dale Earle Ray, you want me to teach you how to bake?”

  “Yes m’am, I do. I’s a quick study.” I felt a little flushed at that last – it wasn’t strictly speaking a lie, but there’s some things I took to quick and some things that never really stuck no matter how long I tried, and I didn’t know for sure which baking would be, but I wanted her to teach me so I figured that I’d better just go with it and hope it worked out.

  “And why do you want to learn, Dale? You got a girl you want to impress or something?” She smiled then, a real kind smile, and I knew it was gonna be okay, that she’d let me stick around.

  “No, m’am. I’s hopin’ to be able to bake for my mama, learn how to make her bread. Maybe even a cake, for her birthday.”

  Her smile got wider, showing white teeth. She looked really pretty when she smiled like that. “well Dale Earle Ray, ain’t you a sweet young thing? Of course I’ll be happy to teach you what I know, ain’t nothing to it really. I’m sure you’ll pick it up real fast.”

  I smiled back at that, and I’m pretty sure I was blushing too, sure felt like my face was hot anyways. She stuck the fan on, and said “Come on in” and waved me over to the breakfast bar in the middle of the living room. “Take a stool, hun, I’ll just bring over the ingredients.” I looked over as she bent to peer in the fridge. Something about the way her behind moved in those white pants did something to me, and I felt things beginning to get a little uncomfortable down there, but luckily I was sat down and had the counter for cover. I turned to look out the window for a distraction, but all the blinds were drawn, like usual. I tried to think about ‘cycles instead as the sounds of her rummaging and opening and closing cupboards came from the open kitchen area.

  “Now, I hope it’s okay, but I was already plannin’ on makin’ gingerbread men this mornin’ – got the ground ginger from the store just yesterday. It’s a good place to start anyway, simple enough for you to get a feel for things…” her voice drifted above the sound of ingredients and utensils being assembled.

  “..maybe if we have time afterward, we could make some of my Derby Pie. Treat Dan when he gets home. That man does love a slice of pie.” She laughed then, and it was like music. Warmed me right up.

  She came over to the bar with arms full of ingredients and laid them all out on the table – a small sack of flour, ground ginger in a red-lidded jar, a yellow box with bicarbonate of soda printed on the side, a pack of butter, a bag of sugar, a box of eggs, and a dark red tin of treacle. Then she took out the eggbeater. I stared at it. Twin bladed and threaded, like me, but with a turn handle at the top, unlike me.

  I turned my eyes away somehow and saw her take a smaller bowl out of the larger and put a metal sieve on top of it. Then she went back to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic scale and brought it back. “First we gotta sieve the flour” she said, weighing out an amount, then tipping it into the sieve. She showed me how, then I carried on with that while she spooned out some of the ginger and soda and sprinkled it on top. I
t took a little while to sift the powder but I stayed patient and did like she showed me, trying not to fidget or bend at the belly, even though it felt like I had a small bunny bouncin’ around my insides. Every time I caught a glimpse of her beater out the corner of my eye, or the eggs in their pack, I felt a surge in my pants, an ache that just stopped short of really painful.

  Eventually, we were done siftin’. “Very good, Dale. Now put that to one side there.”

  I slid the bowl over the counter, like she asked.

  She took the second bowl, the butter and the sugar. I watched her as she weighed out the sugar, pouring it into the bowl when she was done, then cutting off a lump from the block of butter and tossing it carelessly in on top.

  “Now, are you ready to get beating, Dale?”

  I didn’t trust myself to speak, my throat felt all dried up and I was afraid I’d just squeak, or say nothing at all. The tightness in my belly was making it a little hard to breathe, and I felt sweat runnin’ down my face.

  “You okay, hun? Are you gettin’ too hot?”

  I sure was, but it wasn’t the warmth of the trailer doin’ it. I shifted in my seat, awful uncomfortable, and the blades of my business rubbed together with a muffled clank.

  I saw her eyes widen a fraction. She’d heard me.

  “What you got under there?”

  The way she asked was so kind, so open and unafraid and... I dunno how to say it, but it made me feel safe somehow.

  My legs were a little wobbly but I managed to get them under me and stood up. The bulge was huge, even through the baggy sweatpants. I looked down at it, too scared to meet her face, too scared of what I might see.

  I heard her breath catch, then come out long and slow.

  “You got somethin’ in your pocket there, mister?”

  Her voice was calm. Not angry, but not exactly friendly anymore either. I shook my head. My face was pounding with my heartbeat. I was sweatin’ all over for real.