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DOOM MAGNETIC!! - CHAPTER ELEVEN:
ELECTRIC DIAPHRAGM
William Pauley III
“Put yer goddamn hands up!” Maundin yells. His six-shooters are aimed just a hair below the golden robot’s white Stetson hat, which actually looks more of a pink under what’s left of the daylight. The golden robot does nothing but hum quietly, sitting atop his shiny silver horse. His eyes are two burning bulbs and Maundin can feel the heat radiating off of them from where he’s standing.
“Can’t you hear me?” Maundin continues to yell. “Touch the fuckin’ sky! Now! Else I’ll blow your goddamn head straight to fuckin’ Mars! And I hear there ain’t too many Radio Shacks out that way, neither, so you best be mindin’ me.”
The robot doesn’t budge.
Maundin notices the weight of his pistols getting heavier. They grow so heavy he can’t hold them anymore. He lets loose his grip and the guns fly from his hands, but they don’t fall to the ground. Instead, they hurl outward. In mid-air, the chambers release, emptying the bullets from each gun till every last one of them are peppered along the sand. The guns follow.
Maundin looks up at the robot, his eyes wide with panic.
“Shit,” he mutters under his breath, then dives down on the sand over the pistols. He grabs one of the guns and frantically attempts to load it, but before he can even manage to dust one of the bullets off, both the guns and every round of ammunition goes soaring through the air, landing in the sand some twenty feet away.
Maundin holds his hands up in the air in surrender.
“Okay, okay…you got me,” Maundin says, “Is this about that Radio Shack remark? I apologize. I don’t even know if it’s true.”
The robot spits out a garbled, unintelligible response. A message displays across its chest on an electric LED banner. The words, “GET ON THE HORSE,” scroll across the screen in plain red lettering.
“You’ve got to be outta yer mind if you think I’m gettin’ on that there freak of a horse,” Maundin says.
The golden robot’s eyes flare with anger, glowing so intensely they actually blow out, like an old-timey flashbulb. The words, “GET ON THE HORSE,” again scroll across the screen on its chest. The robot’s eyes hum back to life.
“Geez, if I knew you were gonna freak out ‘bout it…” Maundin says, trailing off and grabbing ahold of the reigns. Maundin tries to mount the horse, but the horse’s skin is too slick and his dusty boots just slide right off.
“A little help?” he asks.
The golden robot reaches down and jerks Maundin up by his collar, then drops him on top of the horse.
“Hey! Be easy now, shit!” Maundin shouts. “Where we goin’ anyway, on a romantic joyride through the stars?”
The robot garbles more confusion. The LED displays, “YOU WISH” as the robot pins Maundin face down against the horse’s neck.
“Hey! What the fuck are you doin’ t’ me?! Let me go!” Maundin yells.
A third arm, thinner than the first—and with more joints, protrudes from the robot’s torso, grabs ahold of Maundin’s trench coat and tosses it over his head.
“Oh shit, what are you…”
The arm yanks down the waistband of Maundin’s pants until his bare ass feels the heat radiating from the robot’s eyes.
“FUCK NO! FUCK NO! FUCK! NO!” Maundin shouts in terror, failing to free himself of the robot’s immensely powerful grip.
A tiny black speaker raises from out of the palm of the third arm, and its fingers wrap around it to hold it in place. The hand then forces its way inside Maundin’s asshole and travels up through the length of his body. Maundin howls as the arm rearranges the order of his internal organs, moving straight through his stomach, up into his esophagus, and stopping just inside the cavity at the back of his throat. He gags and dry heaves as the arm installs the speaker just behind his uvula. Without warning, the arm retracts and exits his body, all within the space of a single second.
Maundin’s screams are now amplified, to violent levels, sending all sand within a 15-foot radius sailing in the wind, leaving behind only the dry, cracked ground that lay underneath.
The robot loosens its grip and tosses Maundin off the horse.
“WHAT THE FUCK!” Maundin shouts, his voice still amplified.
“LOWER YOUR VOICE,” scrolls across the robot’s chest. “I AM STAHL, MASTER OF STARDUST.”
Maundin punches the silver horse in the jaw, somehow without breaking any of the bones in his fist. He turns and elbows the horse in the side, pushing against it with all his might. The horse does not budge.
“WHY THE FUCK DID YOU…DID YOU…OH MY FUCKIN’ GOD!” Maundin shouts. “If’n you HAD to do this, then why the hell didn’t you do it through my goddamn mouth?! Wouldn’t that’a been easier?!”
“HEH HEH HEH,” scrolls across the robot’s chest.
“OH MY GOD! GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME, YOU SOULLESS SCRAP HEAP!”
“AS YOU WISH,” the LED reads. Stahl expels a hearty electric cackle, then whips the reigns. The horse sprints away, disappearing into the Doom Magnetic.
“OH GOD FUCKIN’ DAMN!” Maundin says, pulling his pants up over his ass.
He stumbles over to the spot on the ground where his guns now lay, dusts off the bullets, and reloads the chambers.
“I swear to Sam Hell I’m gonna get that fuckin’ robot! Goddamn it!” he says, burying the guns into their holsters. It’s an empty threat he shouts aloud, just in case his life really is the fucked-up reality show he’s always secretly suspected it was.
He buries his face in his hands, takes a deep breath, and sighs.
“I mean, what the actual fuck?”
Paid subscribers! The next chapter of this story will be posted on April 18th! Stay tuned for Direct Line to the Telepathic.
Electric Diaphragm
© William Pauley III, 2011
All rights reserved.
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