Fallen behind? Catch up here.
DOOM MAGNETIC! - CHAPTER TEN:
THE SMOKE UNIT
William Pauley III
Those Japanese sonsabitches slap cuffs on our wrists, faster than we can say Tennō Tanjōbi, and fix it to where we can’t even stand up from our chairs. Ha, like we even got a place to hide. The whole goddamn planet belongs to them.
The room is dark, ‘cept for a revolving blue light installed in the center of the ceiling that illuminates our faces for a full second before making its way around the rest of the room. I assume that we’re alone in this room, but as the light revolves, I’m proven wrong. There’s a familiar face staring back at us from over in the corner. It’s Qoser. Well, at least part of him. His body’s been replaced with what looks t’be a goddamn giant tarantula.
He looks pissed.
“Qoser,” I say, breaking the silence. His right eye and two front legs twitch at the sound of my voice. He disappears again in the darkness as the blue light makes its way back towards Vonna and me. The silence reclaims its reign over the room.
I look over to my side. Vonna is asleep. Puke is crusted on the outside of her lip and runs down along her chin. She chokes on a chunk of it, wakes up for a moment to hack it up, then returns to the land of nod.
“You know, Maundin,” Qoser’s voice rips through the darkness like razorblade. “Ever since you cut off my head and left me in that bar to die, I’ve done nothing but think of ways to seek vengeance on you.”
He’s bathed in blue for a moment and then swallowed again by darkness.
“But now, with this godforsaken body, I’m unable to personally make you suffer in the ways that I feel you should. So I’ve decided it best to let someone else do my dirty work this time around. It’s for the greater good, after all.”
There’s an unmistakable meanness in his voice. This man wants me dead, but not without a great deal of suffering first.
“Look here—” The second the words leave my lips, Qoser leaps towards me and wraps all eight of his hairy legs around my mouth, squeezing as tight as a goddamn anaconda.
“Shut up!” he shouts, “Shut the fuck up!”
He squeezes tighter, my nose smashes flat against his abdomen, suffocating me. I try to kick my legs, but they’ve been tied to the chair. I can hardly budge.
“Shut up. Shut up. Shut up,” He repeats under his breath, giving my skull a taut squeeze every time he says it.
Just as I begin to lose consciousness, he releases me. I gasp desperately to fill my lungs.
Qoser tears into the Doom Magnetic with one of his twitchy legs and shouts, “Kaft, Brouler, and Rine!”
Three dwarfish Japanese men wearin’ black tuxedos stumble out of the Doom Magnetic, all three sportin’ pencil-thin moustaches, black thick-rimmed glasses, and holding tiny briefcases. The men shuffle across the room, towards us. They lay their tiny briefcases up on the top of a table and secretly turn the code dials. They cup their hands over the dials to keep their codes safe from wanderin’ eyes. The cases pop open. Inside, are oversized cigars and a box of matches. Kaft, Brouler and Rine light up the cigars, take a deep breath, and begin to exhale smoke straight into my face.
“What the hell is this?” I look over at Qoser, who has since returned to his original position in the far left corner of the room.
“This is the Smoke Unit, Maundin. I think you’ll find the experience quite soothing once you begin to slip into unconsciousness.”
“You really think a bunch of secondhand smoke is going to kill us?”
“Kill you? Oh, no, no, no. This isn’t to kill you, my boy, this is only to get you to rest. See, tomorrow is when I plan to do the killing.” Qoser laughs.
Vonna awakens as Qoser’s carries on, completely unaware of where she is or who all these strange men are. She screams.
Kaft, Brouler, and Rine run in a figure-eight ‘round Vonna and me, blowin’ more smoke clouds into our faces. The room quickly fills with smoke, blanketing the light, creatin’ quite a storm across the ceiling. Vonna’s screaming becomes thunder.
The clouds swirl ‘round my head in dizzyin’ patterns. The men seem to be running faster, breathing harder. The air is too thick to breathe. I can feel myself slippin’ into a deep sleep. Vonna vomits on the floor beside her chair. I close my eyes and fade.
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on January 10th! Stay tuned for Scissorlips!
The Smoke Unit
© William Pauley III, 2009
All rights reserved.
Share this post