A fair few years ago now, a friend of mine had a birthday. I don’t want any presents, he said. Instead write a story. It can be about anything you like, any plot, any theme, any style, but it must have two things - (1) I must be the protagonist, and (2) at some point I must die.
Here’s my entry.
Oh wow, what an absolutely stunning spring morning. Soul-nourishing sunshine warmed mid-morning grassy dew. Flocks of birds chattered and sang in the nearby weeping willows, laughing tots played hide-and-seek amidst gossamer tufts of bush, delicate sunlight tinkled through beeches and the occasional fluffy cloud, happy townsfolk set up their stalls in preparation for the village fete scheduled for the afternoon, lovemaking couples giggled and squirmed with happy pleasure in the riverside undergrowth. All was bliss.
An incandescent fireball of burning bankers hurtled from the sky, slapping into the faces of all present like a cowpat on the Mona Lisa. All that aforementioned shit crinkled in flame, an acrid gunpowdery sort of flame, and turned to blackness and soggy dust. Evil clogged the pores of all. The butterflies turned into goth-moths and started singing Suicide Tuesday. The Sun blackened like a rotting tooth. The couples’ ability to orgasm vanished, and the now withered brush concealing them started jerking as they miserably humped for a climax cruelly dangled outside their reach. The nearby stream started flowing with Bovril and enemas.
Part of the village fete ground crumbled and fell into a yawning abyss below. Eldritch blasts of hellish light erupted miles up from it, shattering eardrums, and painted the remains of the sky with metallic spackles. By now, that small subset of the townsfolk not humping kicked off some seriously panicked rioting, and started running screaming in all directions.
An elderly man approached. Gaunt and bent with age, yet proud and swaggering, with a sneery facial expression that screamed out “Why yes I AM a colossal asshole. Deal with it, dickhead.” One hand held a thick, leather-bound book. The other hand swirled and brandished theatrically around him as he chanted incantations from it.
“And Jesus said unto his disciples, death death death death death death death lunch death death death afternoon tea death death quick shower.” Cars exploded, cats caught fire, Cookies ‘n’ Rohypnol ice cream melted from the spoons of toddlers.
Shafts of unearthly light swirled and sparkled and burst forth around both him and the portal to the underworld forming nearby. Clearly this man is somehow the focus, the source of the terrible events unfolding.
This wasn’t lost on the nearby rioters. A few screamed at him. “Who ARE you?” some shrieked, silhouetted against the incandescence of their former homes burning.
The man stopped chanting. He turned and smiled a slithery grin. Lightning bathed his face in a fluorescent glow. “Hi. I’m Fred Phelps, baby. Westboro Baptist Church? You’ve heard of me? Yeah. Damn right you have, you maggot.”
“You’re the cause of all this?” one of the rioters whined. “What are you DOING? What have we ever done to you?”
Phelps scratched his chin in thought. “Hah. It’s not so much what you’ve done, babycakes, it’s what you are. Sinners. Sinners one and all, and it’s high time you lot were stamped out.” He hefted his Evil Bible. “So I made this little beauty, and I’m doing a bit of cleanup work. Cleanse the world and all that.”
“It’s a free country!” another yelped. “Can’t you keep your beliefs to yourself–”
Phelps snapped his fingers. A shower of buttocks burst from his book like an automatic bubble-blower, burying the unfortunate speaker. He cackled.
“You’re mad,” snarled one particularly angry-looking man. “You’ll be stopped, you know, the military, the big guns will take you down–”
“Oh, you mean this lot?” said Phelps rather smugly. He waved a hand, and above him and the crowd appeared a B1 stealth bomber, twenty-seven Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, 221 M1A1 tanks, nineteen Tomahawk cruise missiles, about five thousand soldiers, the HMS Illustrious, and seven ICBMs hovering in mid-air above them. The soldiers showed no signs of struggle and were already growing devil-horns.
Phelps waved again, and one of the soldiers wafted over and down to him, staring unblinking and blank ahead of her. She took a cigarette lighter out of her pocket, hovering a foot off the ground before him, and Phelps lit a cigar. He waved again and she resumed her former position.
“This shower of douches attacked me this morning,” he puffed. Expensive smoke wreathed him. “Lightweights. Was there anything else?” Phelps affixed the rioter with a record-breaking smug grin.
The rioter screamed in impotent rage and charged Phelps, brandishing a cricket bat. His grin increased in smarmy smugness still further. At the last possible moment he snapped his fingers, and arcs of lightning shot from his Bible and enveloped not just him but every single rioter. They all turned into Cindy Crawford clones, each wearing leopardskin bikinis.
“That’s better,” he said. “What a goddess, right? She’d never sin.” He licked the cheek of the nearest one. She outwardly cooed in subservient pleasure. Behind her eyes, her original occupant’s imprisoned psyche raged.
Brian* opened and held out a velvet-lined briefcase, displaying its contents to the snazzy-yet-stroppy audience before him. He and they stood within quite a large floor-to-ceiling-window-lined conference room. A late-night cityscape twinkled behind and below them. Lines of crossed-armed henchwomen bracketed a table of senior dignitaries, in a Dragon’s-Den-style configuration.
“These, ladies,” Brian began, “are the last sex toys you’ll ever need.”
A burly henchwoman walked haughtily over to him. She squinted suspiciously at the inside of the briefcase. Her eyes glanced at his.
“This is the merchandise?” Nitrogen ice entombed every syllable.
“That’s right. Examine for yourself. The latest pleasure-tech.”
The henchwoman picked one up in a massive fist. She pawed at its ON button. She didn’t even get it within a foot of her pelvic area before doubling up in an incandescent orgasm. She staggered and fell over, and after about thirty incredible seconds, clutched around for the OFF button. Her face was wreathed in a radiant smile. Sweat beaded her forehead.
She tried to stand up and eventually succeeded, staggering giggling back to Brian's briefcase and replaced the toy. She fell over again as her shivering legs gave way, sprawled on the marble floor making no attempt to get up, giggled some more, fanned her face for several seconds, and nodded happily back at the Hosbeforebros gang leader sitting at the main table, Helen Mirren.
Mirren gave a sly, anticipatory smile. “So these are the fabled Laser Fusion Stealth Clit-Caressers we’ve heard so much about. Incredible. A name as ridiculous as that screams NERD to me, but wow, they clearly deliver the goods. Jolene? His money, if you please.”
Another woman, wearing a rather fashionable-if-I-say-so-myself evening gown, approached the duo. She held out another briefcase.
Brian clicked the catches open. “Five million dollars, Mr. Carren,” said Mirren. “The usual stuff – non-sequential, used bills, untraceable. If your Clit-Caressers are all you’ve claimed, and going by Agatha’s reaction they most certainly are–” Ms. Agatha flolloped on the marble floor and finally got her giggling under control “–then they they’re worth every penny. I do hope this is the beginning of a long and happy relationship, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I couldn’t agree more, Helen–” Brian closed Ms. Jolene’s briefcase, took it, and began to hand over his own briefcase.
The floor-to-ceiling windows Brian had his back to all shattered at once. A hail of autocannon fire raked the former windows from some hidden source above. Brian and Jolene hit the floor, joining Agatha. A masked special-forces-ish-looking man Tarzanned into the room from above, casting off his now-collapsing parachute. He was on the end of an airborne bungy cord, the other end of which was attached to a military transport plane, a few kilometres up and flying past the conference room very very quickly. On it, quite a few side-mounted autocannons belched smoke from their exertions.
“Sisters! Apprehend the intruder!” Mirren bellowed. The lines of henchwomen surrounding her screamed and charged Brian and his new friend.
The man ran over and wrapped his arms around Brian, who was still holding both briefcases in mounting confusion. The henchwomen ran and leaped over them and attempted a pile-on. The bungy cord tautened. The two yoinked out from beneath them, then out of the room and up into the deepening night sky.
Mirren shot to her feet and bolted to the remains of the window. “Betrayer!” she screamed after him. “Betrayer! You would rob us? Hosbeforebros will FIND you, and I will crush you like a fucking bug.”
“Aargh! Wait!” bellowed Brian back to her above the gathering wind whoosh, desperately clutching at both briefcases. “This isn’t my doing!”
“Heh, don’t bother, mate,” growled his captor, as they twanged up into the stars, “way out of earshot now. Mothership’s reeling us in, see.” The duo reached the plane, other masked soldiers manhandled them inside, and something pricked his neck. He lost consciousness.
Brian awoke. Technically at least. Fog and miasma swirled around his brain, happily scattering grit into every little cerebral cranny. “Oh GOD…” His head lolled in the chair he was tied to.
“Brian.” An artificial voice rasped.
“Whu?” He tried to open his eyes. Blobs and patches of light swam before him.
“Brian Carren.” The voice rasped again. “Wakey wakey, sonny Jim.”
He succeeded. Barely. He looked around him, head full of concrete. He was in some sort of interrogation room. Sparsely furnished. Barely lit. Tied to a chair, facing a pane of one-way glass.
“Welcome, Mister Carren,” the voice croaked. “My associates and I apologise for the manner in which you were brought here, mid-air harpooning is seldom soothing, but we couldn’t wait for a ‘yes’ – time is very much of the essence. First things first. What does the name Fred Phelps mean to you?”
“Um, ugh …” Brian tried to think through the haze of knockout drugs. “Um … that swimmer, isn’t he? …Pothead?”
“No, that’s Michael Phelps. Try again.”
“Fred … wait, I think I’ve heard of … him,” Brian autopilot’d. “The Westboro guy … uh, right? His crew are the ones with GOD LAUGHS WHILE FAGS DIE signs?”
“Excellent, Mister Carren. The very man. Now. We have business–”
“Wait, hang on,” Brian said. Thoughts started to clamber around his skull. “I was – we – Mirren!”
“Mirren? What’s a mirren?”
“Helen Mirren – Hosbeforebros – I was in the middle of a deal!”
“Oh yes. Her. Bah. Small-timer. This is rather more important,” the voice barked. “Phelps–”
“Important? You don’t cross Hosbeforebros!” Raw shock applied a defibrillator to Brian's thought patterns. “Have you seen Helen Mirren when she’s angry? She’ll eat me, you, and this entire whatever-this-place-is alive!”
“Hah,” the Voice rumbled. “I think not. We’re well dug-in here. Soldiers, snipers, tanks.”
“Then you’ll have one hell of a fight on your hands, my dear, very soon–”
“If we can get to the POINT,” it growled. “Phelps has opened a portal to the underworld. He has destroyed the entire US eastern seaboard. A million hellish demons throng the skies.”
“…Uh. What? How?”
“Search me. Maybe his particular brand of fiery pulpit religion was actually the right one. Not a pleasant thought, but there you go.”
“Oookay … but what’s this got to do with me? Why kidnap me? And who are you lot, anyway?”
“We, Mr. Carren, are the local chapter of the worldwide League of Badass. We hide in the global shadows, yada yada yada, we do the world’s dirty work, like a corporate Batman. You get the idea.
“And why you’ve been kidnapped? Same reason you’re the first male Helen Mirren and her gang have ever consented to meeting. Same reason you got first dibs on the newly made Laser Fusion Stealth Clit-Caressers, hot off the assembly line. You’re an incredible charmer. Isn’t it true you once gave the Queen of England a G-spot orgasm from the far side of a room just by tactical eyebrow-waggling? And she was live on air, in the middle of her Christmas speech! Even to this day, large sections of the British public still think she was just really really happy about the Abu Ghraib war crimes.”
The far side of the interrogation window one-way glass began fogging up. “Gosh, I still get wet just thinking about it! Sometimes, late at night, I–” The voice stopped abruptly. “Harrumph Yes. Right. Anyway.” Streaks appeared in the far-window fog, as of a squeegee wiping it clean. “Point is, you know your shit.”
“Thanks, I think,” said Brian, a skeptical eyebrow raised. “But I’m still confused. So I can turn a few heads. Yay me. But he’s destroyed the US seaboard? Hardly my speciality. Why come to me?”
“Because you, Brian Carren, are our only hope. We’ve tried diplomacy. Phelps turned Kofi Annan into a Cindy Crawford clone in seconds. He’s got a Thing for her, it seems. We’ve tried the military option. The UK resurrected its entire Atlantic fleet from mothballing, everything from the Napoleon-era HMS Thunderer to the far-future HMS Enterprise-MCCCXXXVII – he Crawford’d the lot. Do you have any idea how ridiculous an aircraft carrier looks in a leopardskin bikini?
“Diplomacy is useless. Brute force is useless. Subtlety is all we have. Your speciality. Your job.
“Your mission is to sneak into Phelps-land in any manner you see fit, and seduce the shit out of him.”
Brian blinked. His nose wrinkled in disgust. “Seduce Phelps. The GOD HATES FAGS guy. I’m gay myself, you know. I can’t stand him. He makes my skin crawl. He’d make anyone’s skin crawl. He’s like a religious Jabba the Hutt. And you want me to seduce him? That withered husk of a man? No. No. No. Can’t be done.”
“All right, smartass – you’re free to leave anytime you like, but you take one step outside and Mirren will skin you alive. That’s what you want is it?”
Brian paused. Shit. Check.
“And you may not have noticed,” the Voice continued, “due to being tied up, but you’re handcuffed to a briefcase. An armoured briefcase. In it are those sex toys you had with you, the ones your friend Mirren is after. We added a rather special lock to it – ‘bond’ with Phelps and disarm him. It’ll unlock at that point, and not a second before. You’ll then be able to make peace with your precious Mirren. Do we understand one another?”
“Oh all right,” he hmphed. “I’ll do it.”
“Excellent! No time to lose, you’ll be equipped to face Phelps immediately.”
Lights snapped on, revealing the entire room in its full brightness. Doors opened. Guards hurried into the room and unhandcuffed Brian. He stood, swaying slightly from the final effects of the knockout drugs.
A man in a white lab coat arrived – Q, evidently, or at least the League of Badass’s equivalent. “Your briefcase, sir.”
“Thank you.” Brian massaged his now free wrists.
“Also, you’ll need this,” the labcoated man said. “Something special us lab techs have made. If you’re going to seduce Phelps – these pills pep up your, er, rear entrance. “Ribbed for his pleasure” is not the phrase I would have chosen, but that’s what caught on down in the lab.”
Brian glared at him, rather annoyed. “Thank you but no. I’ll have you know I keep my ass in tip-top condition. Mighty penises have challenged its ramparts. Few have prevailed.”
Mr. Labcoat sighed. “I mean no disrespect, Mr. Carren, but you ain’t seen nothing. You know those competitions where men pull entire tractors and suchlike with their teeth? Same deal here. Just you wait.”
Brian raised an eyebrow. A bold claim indeed. “All right then. Gimme.”
Mr. Labcoat handed the pills over. “Good man. Right this way, if you please.”
Mr. Labcoat led Brian, along with quite a few military escorts, along several halls, passing bustling labs and barrackses and gyms and rooms packed with circuitry, outside into sunshine and a carpark, and from there into a special ops black van. “What ho, Jeeves,” Mr. Labcoat barked, “jumpship pad, pronto.”
The van and several others left the League of Badass compound and bustled through its host city. Highways snaked everywhere. In the van, more Badass operatives fussed over Brian's extra equipment, making sure he was up to snuff on their use.
Mr. Labcoat glanced in the mirror. He paused. “That’s odd.”
“Hm?” hm’d Brian, lab techs fussing at his equipment pouches.
“Pursuit. Looks like your Hosbeforebros friends are keeping an eye on you.”
They were. Several other white vans pursued the Badass black vans now hurtling down the city highway. One revved like mad and drove alongside Brian's van. Its side door trundled open, exposing several henchwomen holding something large and heavy and pink, with an attached note. It struggled. They set fire to part of it, and hurled the object through Brian's van’s window.
The other van braked wildly and zoomed down an off-ramp and away. Brian's van swerved wildly from the weight of the note anchor.
“Aah! Jeeves! Get us under control!” bellowed Mr. Labcoat.
The van stabilized once more. Brian looked down at the note anchor now sprawled across his lap. “Hang on.” He looked closer. “…A person.” Closer still. “Just a sec. I recognize you. Isn’t this…?”
It was. Silvio Berlusconi, wearing a burning bra. “Aah! Fire!” Mr. Labcoat let rip with a fire extinguisher, rendering van visibility zero. Berlusconi struggled against his hogtie handcuffs and ball-gag. The van started to swerve once more.
The van hit the highway’s hard shoulder and clattered to a halt. Through the thinning extinguisher smoke, Mr. Labcoat plucked the note from where it was wedged between Berlusconi’s buttocks. He read. “WE WILL HAVE OUR CARESSERS OR YOU WILL HAVE A GRAND CANYON WHERE YOUR SCROTUM WAS.”
Inside the Hosbeforebros van, its pair of operatives fired up a Skype call to Mirren. “Yeah. You were right,” one of them said to her. “Good idea of yours, keeping tabs on that plane what snatched Mister Carren away from us.”
“Yes. Of course it was, I thought of it, that’s why you’re there, monitoring Carren's Badass mates.” Mirren growled. “He thought he could give us a little taste, then snatch away not only our Caressers, but our money too. Well?”
“Yes boss?”
“What’s he up to?”
“Dunno boss.”
“You don’t know? Why did you contact me? Do your job! Find out!”
“Uh yes boss.”
A pause.
“Well?”
“Yes boss?”
“Keep tracking Carren.”
“Yes boss. Sorry boss.”
The Skype window flickered to blank as Mirren hung up on them. Another pause.
“Oh that’s right,” one of the henchwomen grunted. “Carren's at the Badass jumpship pad. Off to meet Phelps. We were gonna tell the boss.” She dialed Mirren once more.
Mirren appeared again, looking furious. “WHAT.”
“Boss. Carren's off to see Phelps.”
Helen Mirren paused. Her fury receded to mere anger, then morphed into determination. “Oh he is, is he? Hah. As we surmised. Just a sec, my dears.”
Mirren turned to address various figures behind her. Either side of her head, the two henchwomen could see the interior of some large building. It throbbed with activity and was packed with large arrays of spiky-looking equipment, commandos, troops, but more importantly, large numbers of teched-up, beweaponed figures looking oddly like Cindy Crawford. “Oi!” she shouted to a few of them. “Carren-Phelps rendezvous confirmed. We will crush not only him but his allies too. Saddle up, girls, we’re finally off to war!” The activity-throbbing throbbed still more actively.
She turned back to the two henchwomen. “Phelps has a weakness for Cindy Crawford, it turns out, and magics his attackers into clones of her, so some of the lab girls started manufacturing fake Crawford moles. Instant disguise. Watch this.” Mirren held up a finger to her laptop’s camera. On it was a microscopic little blip of a cosmetic mole. She pressed it to her upper lip. Bam. Crawford.
“Not bad, eh?” Mirren transmogrified back into herself as she peeled off the fake mole. “Hah.” She chuckled. “If only the UK navy had battleship moles, amIrite?”
Brian glanced around him, wrinkled his nose and tried not to inhale. Dear god, what a dump. Behind him and increasingly above him, the scramjet engines of the Badass dropship that’d dumped him at his destination whined skyward with vertical thrust. The wingèd lozenge shot upward and punched through the horrible syrupy smog layer constantly fed from the gaseous sludge emitted from the Sin piles piled everywhere. It vanished with a gurgle.
Before him lay Phelps’s fortress. A dank, turgid affair, slumping with his evil, all earwax and leather and Astroturf and gorse. It blended in perfectly with the environment generated around itself – dark, crackly skies, howling wasteland, tumbleweed, alkali pools, bleached skeletons. Amidst these lay the Sin piles.
Brian kicked at one. It was a hundred-metre-high pyramid of ‘70s Playboy mags. The next one was a great big prickly pile of hen party penis straws; adjoining it was a mighty stack of VHS recordings of The A-Team episodes. Ohh, of course, Brian thought, this is what Phelps thinks is sinful, he’s ridding the world of it and gathering it here. All the more reason to seduce his evil from the world, eh? He cracked his knuckles, blew on his fingertips, rubbed his hands, and narrowed his eyes at the fortress. Let’s get started.
A great rumbling as of many many wheeled machines and hobnailed boots, arriving from some way behind, pricked up his ears. Holding the armoured Clit-Caresser briefcase still handcuffed to his left wrist well above the Sin fumes, he clambered around the nearest Sin pile to investigate.
A Hosbeforebros army approached. Tens of thousands of Crawford clones marched in formation, brandishing many fearsome weapons, followed by tanks and mobile artillery and supply trucks and the army’s centerpiece, the German WW1-era Big Bertha artillery piece. At its head was Helen Mirren, wearing Raquel Welch’s Cavewoman costume with easy pride. “Strength, girls, strength!” she bellowed. “Phelps’s fortress of sexism will be crushed by sundown.”
Aha, thought Brian, this is my chance! Quickly, grab a uniform and infiltrate! He stole silently past a few of the more trailing ranks of henchwomen, plucked a cosh from the bandoliers of equipment the Badass operatives insisted he wear, clonked a straggler on the head, noticed her artificially conspicuous Crawford-mole, removed it with curiosity, wet himself slightly with shock as the henchwoman flolloped back into her original shape beneath him, cocked an eyebrow as he realised the mole’s power, applied it to his own face, whipped out a hand mirror from the same bandolier, and examined his Crawford’d reflection with pleasant surprise. Hah. Perfect. Even better than I’d thought.
He hurried over to the Hosbeforebros army, bold as you like, and snuck in amongst them.
A crackly rumble emanated from Phelps’s fortress. The front gate swung open. Phelps emerged, borne by a ceremonial litter of two hundred and fifty-six Playboy Bunnies.
He saw the oncoming Crawford-army and his mouth fell open with astonished delight. “Oh wow! Is this delivery?”
The army blustered closer, trying to get him within range of their guns. Mirren nodded at her subordinates. “….Wwwwait for it….”
Fred Phelps walked up to what he thought were ten thousand Cindy Crawfords, batting their eyelashes coquettishly at him and flashing shy smiles. He grinned lecherously, bounded up to the nearest one and tried to lick her cheek.
Mirren roared with fury and dodged his grasping tongue. “FIRE, SISTERS!” She and quite a few other soldiers unloaded the magazine of the machine guns they were carrying into his stomach. He groaned in pain, staggered back, and collapsed into a particularly corrosive alkali pool. It discoloured.
“Ha ha! We triumph!” bellowed Mirren. She and her cronies thrust their guns skyward in glee.
Phelps’s head snapped upward in fury. Fire belched from his eyes. The gunshot wounds on his abdomen slithered shut. He scrambled upright and held his left hand up. His Evil Bible materialized. Electric fire cascaded from his right.
The front ranks of the Hosbeforebros army tumbled back in terror, then the army as a whole advanced in grim anger, brandishing and firing their weapons all at once.
From behind the army proper. Brian squinted at the battle. Huh, he pondered, will Hosbeforebros do my own job for me?
Evidently not. The element of surprise now gone, Phelps’s magic powers easily caught and froze each and every bullet, shell and rocket fired at him. Great curtains of expended ordnance hung motionless and glinting in what little sunlight squidged through the smog layer above. He beat the army back with great magic tsunamis of odiousness and contempt.
Shit, Brian thought from the safety of his hidey hole, he can overpower entire armies? There’s no way I’m getting out of this alive, is there?
He glanced down at his handcuffed briefcase, Clit-Caressers inside. Let’s see now, old boy, let us weigh up the options.
Option One: I run away from here right now and have a furious Mirren hound me for a few days or weeks – there’s no way she’ll allow even Phelps to kill her, she’ll escape and regroup – then she’ll catch me and skin me alive. Yay.
Option Two: I charge Phelps and seduce him but probably losing my life in the process. Ugh.
Brian pondered. Agonizing death versus glorious death. Hm.
He looked up. The Hosbeforebros army retreated slightly, evidently attempting to regroup and attack once more. Various engineers brought their Big Bertha cannon online. Its barrel smouldered with barely-harnessed power.
Brian pounced. Fuckit. Now’s my chance! Getting a good grip on his hostage-briefcase, he sprinted through the army’s shattered front ranks and confronted Phelps.
“Why hello there,” he smarmed, twirling a strand of his long brunette hair around his fingers.
“I don’t know who the hell you people are,” snarled Phelps at him, “but the Crawford disguise is kaput. Don’t you dare impersonate my lovely. You’re not even wearing a leopardskin bikini! Pathetic!” He thrust his right hand back, the better to cast terrible fire on Cindy! Brian.
“But I am!” Brian squeaked in what he thought might possibly kinda-sorta be her voice.
“What?”
“I am Cindy Crawford! Help me, Fred, I’m scared!” ad-libbed Brian. Hell, why not, I’m on a roll, and this seems to be working. “Save me from these scary women!” He clutched his chest in the area of what he guesstimated his Crawford-disguise would make Phelps perceive as breasts, and rolled them back and forth in his hands, Morse-cleavaging at him.
Phelps’s eyes narrowed in skepticism. A millisecond later his features relaxed into a rather arrogant-looking easy swagger. “Of course I will, sweetcheeks. Come to papa.”
Brian turned on his high-heel, popped one of the aforementioned rear-pills gifted earlier by Mr. Labcoat, and wiggled his bottom provocatively at Phelps. “Come get me, you big sausage, I’m all yours! I want you inside me. Right now.”
Ugh, not proud of that, he thought, but it’ll have to do – and hey, looks like it’s working! Something whoomphed in his sphincter muscles. He felt energized.
“Wahey! You’re on!” Another whoomph.
Phelps undid his belt. A third whoomph. Brian looked over his shoulder, smiled, hand on mouth, and wiggled his bottom again.
Phelps entered Brian. He grinned in pleasure. A second later his grin turned to shock. “Uh-what? Aargh! This really hurts!”
Thanks to Mr. Labcoat’s pills, Brian now had a sphincter like a cigar cutter. “Aargh! Let me go you monster!” It acted like a cock ring, clamping Phelps’s erection in place.
“Hah! Got you!” Brian crowed. Wow! These pills are the dog’s bollocks.
And on cue, with a cute little ding, the briefcase handcuffs snapped open. Brian quickly opened the thing. Inside, as promised, were four gleaming-new Laser Fusion Stealth Clit-Caressers.
All around them, the murky gloom turned brilliant strobe-white as the Hosbeforebros army, now finishing their regrouping, opened fire with every weapon they had.
“Holy shit, let me disengage, they’re attacking us! They’ll beat us!” Phelps whined. He shook and struggled and bucked like a rodeo horse. Brian, trying his best to pick up the Clit-Caressers, was pulled from left to right and fumbled them. Just in time, Phelps’s right hand snapped upward and halted the incoming munitions in their tracks.
Phelps screamed with rage. “LET ME GO YOU ASSHOLE”
Brian scrambled around to pick up the Caressers, grabbing two. “Never!” he finally addressed Phelps. “You’re not getting away!”
Phelps shoved Brian forward. “I KILL YOU–” He spied the other two Caressers. “Wait, what’s this?” He grabbed them.
The two of them turned all four Caressers on at once. A radiant glow of sex-sweat bathed all present. The thousands of furious henchwomen doing their attacking stopped in their tracks, mouths hanging open.
Big Bertha rumbled forward and toward the lines of soldiers separating it and Brian/Phelps. Pay dirt, Brian thought, eyeing its barrel. No way Phelps will survive being shot from that. Now or never, baby.
He sprinted toward, charging toward the Hosbeforebros battalion ranks at high speed, Phelps dangling behind Brian by his cock, swirling around in his slipstream like an inside-out umbrella. “Aieee!”
Brian cannoned into the battalion front lines, dual-wielding his Caressers. So did Phelps. Balls-deep in Brian, the two of them brandished the four Caressers like General Grievous’s four lightsabres in Revenge of the Sith. Great tsunamis of beweaponed henchwomen tried to swarm them, and then melted off the pair like Cumberbitches at a Sherlock Holmes convention.
The Big Bertha engineers loaded the beastie, ready to fire upon them both. Mirren in particular, seeing the battle, scampered up the side of the immense cannon, taking great care not to wrinkle her Raquel Welch Cavewoman costume, and commandeered the aiming mechanism. The barrel swiveled.
At last the ranks broke. Dragging a shrieking Phelps, Brian leaped toward the Big Bertha barrel, jumping inside. At the last second, just before vanishing from view, he grinned and winked at Helen Mirren, brandishing his two Caressers.
Before she realised her beloved Clit-Caressers were vanishing from sight and from existence, Mirren fired. A tornado of plasma erupted from the barrel, atomizing Brian and Phelps both. Its shell impacted and tore into the ground from which Brian made his barrel-leap, bounced, and smacked into Phelps’s fortress. It exploded.
Mirren twigged. No more Caressers! She shrieked in anguish. “Aargh! Brian Carren!” She beat her fists on Big Bertha’s barrel. “You horrible bastard, I will trash your memory forever!”
The atomized former-Kale wafted into the smog-sludge above.
A shaft of light graced the battlefield. The smog layer rent and tore as Phelps’s stench of evil dissolved into nothingness. The smog swirled and diminished into standard rainclouds.
Something pattered into the dusty ground beside Mirren. Her fist slowly dropped as her attention moved to it. Again, something paffed into the sand from above, same size and shape, making a little crater.
Mirren peered at it. Something small and plasticky and shiny. She prodded it. It whirred. She hot-flushed and lost her balance.
Other henchwomen noticed the same things raining around them. They looked puzzled, then hot-flushed also.
Phelps’s Brian-flavoured evil-stench-clouds were raining Extra-Scrumptious bullet vibrators.
Here’s my entry.
Oh wow, what an absolutely stunning spring morning. Soul-nourishing sunshine warmed mid-morning grassy dew. Flocks of birds chattered and sang in the nearby weeping willows, laughing tots played hide-and-seek amidst gossamer tufts of bush, delicate sunlight tinkled through beeches and the occasional fluffy cloud, happy townsfolk set up their stalls in preparation for the village fete scheduled for the afternoon, lovemaking couples giggled and squirmed with happy pleasure in the riverside undergrowth. All was bliss.
An incandescent fireball of burning bankers hurtled from the sky, slapping into the faces of all present like a cowpat on the Mona Lisa. All that aforementioned shit crinkled in flame, an acrid gunpowdery sort of flame, and turned to blackness and soggy dust. Evil clogged the pores of all. The butterflies turned into goth-moths and started singing Suicide Tuesday. The Sun blackened like a rotting tooth. The couples’ ability to orgasm vanished, and the now withered brush concealing them started jerking as they miserably humped for a climax cruelly dangled outside their reach. The nearby stream started flowing with Bovril and enemas.
Part of the village fete ground crumbled and fell into a yawning abyss below. Eldritch blasts of hellish light erupted miles up from it, shattering eardrums, and painted the remains of the sky with metallic spackles. By now, that small subset of the townsfolk not humping kicked off some seriously panicked rioting, and started running screaming in all directions.
An elderly man approached. Gaunt and bent with age, yet proud and swaggering, with a sneery facial expression that screamed out “Why yes I AM a colossal asshole. Deal with it, dickhead.” One hand held a thick, leather-bound book. The other hand swirled and brandished theatrically around him as he chanted incantations from it.
“And Jesus said unto his disciples, death death death death death death death lunch death death death afternoon tea death death quick shower.” Cars exploded, cats caught fire, Cookies ‘n’ Rohypnol ice cream melted from the spoons of toddlers.
Shafts of unearthly light swirled and sparkled and burst forth around both him and the portal to the underworld forming nearby. Clearly this man is somehow the focus, the source of the terrible events unfolding.
This wasn’t lost on the nearby rioters. A few screamed at him. “Who ARE you?” some shrieked, silhouetted against the incandescence of their former homes burning.
The man stopped chanting. He turned and smiled a slithery grin. Lightning bathed his face in a fluorescent glow. “Hi. I’m Fred Phelps, baby. Westboro Baptist Church? You’ve heard of me? Yeah. Damn right you have, you maggot.”
“You’re the cause of all this?” one of the rioters whined. “What are you DOING? What have we ever done to you?”
Phelps scratched his chin in thought. “Hah. It’s not so much what you’ve done, babycakes, it’s what you are. Sinners. Sinners one and all, and it’s high time you lot were stamped out.” He hefted his Evil Bible. “So I made this little beauty, and I’m doing a bit of cleanup work. Cleanse the world and all that.”
“It’s a free country!” another yelped. “Can’t you keep your beliefs to yourself–”
Phelps snapped his fingers. A shower of buttocks burst from his book like an automatic bubble-blower, burying the unfortunate speaker. He cackled.
“You’re mad,” snarled one particularly angry-looking man. “You’ll be stopped, you know, the military, the big guns will take you down–”
“Oh, you mean this lot?” said Phelps rather smugly. He waved a hand, and above him and the crowd appeared a B1 stealth bomber, twenty-seven Eurofighter Typhoon fighter jets, 221 M1A1 tanks, nineteen Tomahawk cruise missiles, about five thousand soldiers, the HMS Illustrious, and seven ICBMs hovering in mid-air above them. The soldiers showed no signs of struggle and were already growing devil-horns.
Phelps waved again, and one of the soldiers wafted over and down to him, staring unblinking and blank ahead of her. She took a cigarette lighter out of her pocket, hovering a foot off the ground before him, and Phelps lit a cigar. He waved again and she resumed her former position.
“This shower of douches attacked me this morning,” he puffed. Expensive smoke wreathed him. “Lightweights. Was there anything else?” Phelps affixed the rioter with a record-breaking smug grin.
The rioter screamed in impotent rage and charged Phelps, brandishing a cricket bat. His grin increased in smarmy smugness still further. At the last possible moment he snapped his fingers, and arcs of lightning shot from his Bible and enveloped not just him but every single rioter. They all turned into Cindy Crawford clones, each wearing leopardskin bikinis.
“That’s better,” he said. “What a goddess, right? She’d never sin.” He licked the cheek of the nearest one. She outwardly cooed in subservient pleasure. Behind her eyes, her original occupant’s imprisoned psyche raged.
Brian* opened and held out a velvet-lined briefcase, displaying its contents to the snazzy-yet-stroppy audience before him. He and they stood within quite a large floor-to-ceiling-window-lined conference room. A late-night cityscape twinkled behind and below them. Lines of crossed-armed henchwomen bracketed a table of senior dignitaries, in a Dragon’s-Den-style configuration.
“These, ladies,” Brian began, “are the last sex toys you’ll ever need.”
A burly henchwoman walked haughtily over to him. She squinted suspiciously at the inside of the briefcase. Her eyes glanced at his.
“This is the merchandise?” Nitrogen ice entombed every syllable.
“That’s right. Examine for yourself. The latest pleasure-tech.”
The henchwoman picked one up in a massive fist. She pawed at its ON button. She didn’t even get it within a foot of her pelvic area before doubling up in an incandescent orgasm. She staggered and fell over, and after about thirty incredible seconds, clutched around for the OFF button. Her face was wreathed in a radiant smile. Sweat beaded her forehead.
She tried to stand up and eventually succeeded, staggering giggling back to Brian's briefcase and replaced the toy. She fell over again as her shivering legs gave way, sprawled on the marble floor making no attempt to get up, giggled some more, fanned her face for several seconds, and nodded happily back at the Hosbeforebros gang leader sitting at the main table, Helen Mirren.
Mirren gave a sly, anticipatory smile. “So these are the fabled Laser Fusion Stealth Clit-Caressers we’ve heard so much about. Incredible. A name as ridiculous as that screams NERD to me, but wow, they clearly deliver the goods. Jolene? His money, if you please.”
Another woman, wearing a rather fashionable-if-I-say-so-myself evening gown, approached the duo. She held out another briefcase.
Brian clicked the catches open. “Five million dollars, Mr. Carren,” said Mirren. “The usual stuff – non-sequential, used bills, untraceable. If your Clit-Caressers are all you’ve claimed, and going by Agatha’s reaction they most certainly are–” Ms. Agatha flolloped on the marble floor and finally got her giggling under control “–then they they’re worth every penny. I do hope this is the beginning of a long and happy relationship, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I couldn’t agree more, Helen–” Brian closed Ms. Jolene’s briefcase, took it, and began to hand over his own briefcase.
The floor-to-ceiling windows Brian had his back to all shattered at once. A hail of autocannon fire raked the former windows from some hidden source above. Brian and Jolene hit the floor, joining Agatha. A masked special-forces-ish-looking man Tarzanned into the room from above, casting off his now-collapsing parachute. He was on the end of an airborne bungy cord, the other end of which was attached to a military transport plane, a few kilometres up and flying past the conference room very very quickly. On it, quite a few side-mounted autocannons belched smoke from their exertions.
“Sisters! Apprehend the intruder!” Mirren bellowed. The lines of henchwomen surrounding her screamed and charged Brian and his new friend.
The man ran over and wrapped his arms around Brian, who was still holding both briefcases in mounting confusion. The henchwomen ran and leaped over them and attempted a pile-on. The bungy cord tautened. The two yoinked out from beneath them, then out of the room and up into the deepening night sky.
Mirren shot to her feet and bolted to the remains of the window. “Betrayer!” she screamed after him. “Betrayer! You would rob us? Hosbeforebros will FIND you, and I will crush you like a fucking bug.”
“Aargh! Wait!” bellowed Brian back to her above the gathering wind whoosh, desperately clutching at both briefcases. “This isn’t my doing!”
“Heh, don’t bother, mate,” growled his captor, as they twanged up into the stars, “way out of earshot now. Mothership’s reeling us in, see.” The duo reached the plane, other masked soldiers manhandled them inside, and something pricked his neck. He lost consciousness.
Brian awoke. Technically at least. Fog and miasma swirled around his brain, happily scattering grit into every little cerebral cranny. “Oh GOD…” His head lolled in the chair he was tied to.
“Brian.” An artificial voice rasped.
“Whu?” He tried to open his eyes. Blobs and patches of light swam before him.
“Brian Carren.” The voice rasped again. “Wakey wakey, sonny Jim.”
He succeeded. Barely. He looked around him, head full of concrete. He was in some sort of interrogation room. Sparsely furnished. Barely lit. Tied to a chair, facing a pane of one-way glass.
“Welcome, Mister Carren,” the voice croaked. “My associates and I apologise for the manner in which you were brought here, mid-air harpooning is seldom soothing, but we couldn’t wait for a ‘yes’ – time is very much of the essence. First things first. What does the name Fred Phelps mean to you?”
“Um, ugh …” Brian tried to think through the haze of knockout drugs. “Um … that swimmer, isn’t he? …Pothead?”
“No, that’s Michael Phelps. Try again.”
“Fred … wait, I think I’ve heard of … him,” Brian autopilot’d. “The Westboro guy … uh, right? His crew are the ones with GOD LAUGHS WHILE FAGS DIE signs?”
“Excellent, Mister Carren. The very man. Now. We have business–”
“Wait, hang on,” Brian said. Thoughts started to clamber around his skull. “I was – we – Mirren!”
“Mirren? What’s a mirren?”
“Helen Mirren – Hosbeforebros – I was in the middle of a deal!”
“Oh yes. Her. Bah. Small-timer. This is rather more important,” the voice barked. “Phelps–”
“Important? You don’t cross Hosbeforebros!” Raw shock applied a defibrillator to Brian's thought patterns. “Have you seen Helen Mirren when she’s angry? She’ll eat me, you, and this entire whatever-this-place-is alive!”
“Hah,” the Voice rumbled. “I think not. We’re well dug-in here. Soldiers, snipers, tanks.”
“Then you’ll have one hell of a fight on your hands, my dear, very soon–”
“If we can get to the POINT,” it growled. “Phelps has opened a portal to the underworld. He has destroyed the entire US eastern seaboard. A million hellish demons throng the skies.”
“…Uh. What? How?”
“Search me. Maybe his particular brand of fiery pulpit religion was actually the right one. Not a pleasant thought, but there you go.”
“Oookay … but what’s this got to do with me? Why kidnap me? And who are you lot, anyway?”
“We, Mr. Carren, are the local chapter of the worldwide League of Badass. We hide in the global shadows, yada yada yada, we do the world’s dirty work, like a corporate Batman. You get the idea.
“And why you’ve been kidnapped? Same reason you’re the first male Helen Mirren and her gang have ever consented to meeting. Same reason you got first dibs on the newly made Laser Fusion Stealth Clit-Caressers, hot off the assembly line. You’re an incredible charmer. Isn’t it true you once gave the Queen of England a G-spot orgasm from the far side of a room just by tactical eyebrow-waggling? And she was live on air, in the middle of her Christmas speech! Even to this day, large sections of the British public still think she was just really really happy about the Abu Ghraib war crimes.”
The far side of the interrogation window one-way glass began fogging up. “Gosh, I still get wet just thinking about it! Sometimes, late at night, I–” The voice stopped abruptly. “Harrumph Yes. Right. Anyway.” Streaks appeared in the far-window fog, as of a squeegee wiping it clean. “Point is, you know your shit.”
“Thanks, I think,” said Brian, a skeptical eyebrow raised. “But I’m still confused. So I can turn a few heads. Yay me. But he’s destroyed the US seaboard? Hardly my speciality. Why come to me?”
“Because you, Brian Carren, are our only hope. We’ve tried diplomacy. Phelps turned Kofi Annan into a Cindy Crawford clone in seconds. He’s got a Thing for her, it seems. We’ve tried the military option. The UK resurrected its entire Atlantic fleet from mothballing, everything from the Napoleon-era HMS Thunderer to the far-future HMS Enterprise-MCCCXXXVII – he Crawford’d the lot. Do you have any idea how ridiculous an aircraft carrier looks in a leopardskin bikini?
“Diplomacy is useless. Brute force is useless. Subtlety is all we have. Your speciality. Your job.
“Your mission is to sneak into Phelps-land in any manner you see fit, and seduce the shit out of him.”
Brian blinked. His nose wrinkled in disgust. “Seduce Phelps. The GOD HATES FAGS guy. I’m gay myself, you know. I can’t stand him. He makes my skin crawl. He’d make anyone’s skin crawl. He’s like a religious Jabba the Hutt. And you want me to seduce him? That withered husk of a man? No. No. No. Can’t be done.”
“All right, smartass – you’re free to leave anytime you like, but you take one step outside and Mirren will skin you alive. That’s what you want is it?”
Brian paused. Shit. Check.
“And you may not have noticed,” the Voice continued, “due to being tied up, but you’re handcuffed to a briefcase. An armoured briefcase. In it are those sex toys you had with you, the ones your friend Mirren is after. We added a rather special lock to it – ‘bond’ with Phelps and disarm him. It’ll unlock at that point, and not a second before. You’ll then be able to make peace with your precious Mirren. Do we understand one another?”
“Oh all right,” he hmphed. “I’ll do it.”
“Excellent! No time to lose, you’ll be equipped to face Phelps immediately.”
Lights snapped on, revealing the entire room in its full brightness. Doors opened. Guards hurried into the room and unhandcuffed Brian. He stood, swaying slightly from the final effects of the knockout drugs.
A man in a white lab coat arrived – Q, evidently, or at least the League of Badass’s equivalent. “Your briefcase, sir.”
“Thank you.” Brian massaged his now free wrists.
“Also, you’ll need this,” the labcoated man said. “Something special us lab techs have made. If you’re going to seduce Phelps – these pills pep up your, er, rear entrance. “Ribbed for his pleasure” is not the phrase I would have chosen, but that’s what caught on down in the lab.”
Brian glared at him, rather annoyed. “Thank you but no. I’ll have you know I keep my ass in tip-top condition. Mighty penises have challenged its ramparts. Few have prevailed.”
Mr. Labcoat sighed. “I mean no disrespect, Mr. Carren, but you ain’t seen nothing. You know those competitions where men pull entire tractors and suchlike with their teeth? Same deal here. Just you wait.”
Brian raised an eyebrow. A bold claim indeed. “All right then. Gimme.”
Mr. Labcoat handed the pills over. “Good man. Right this way, if you please.”
Mr. Labcoat led Brian, along with quite a few military escorts, along several halls, passing bustling labs and barrackses and gyms and rooms packed with circuitry, outside into sunshine and a carpark, and from there into a special ops black van. “What ho, Jeeves,” Mr. Labcoat barked, “jumpship pad, pronto.”
The van and several others left the League of Badass compound and bustled through its host city. Highways snaked everywhere. In the van, more Badass operatives fussed over Brian's extra equipment, making sure he was up to snuff on their use.
Mr. Labcoat glanced in the mirror. He paused. “That’s odd.”
“Hm?” hm’d Brian, lab techs fussing at his equipment pouches.
“Pursuit. Looks like your Hosbeforebros friends are keeping an eye on you.”
They were. Several other white vans pursued the Badass black vans now hurtling down the city highway. One revved like mad and drove alongside Brian's van. Its side door trundled open, exposing several henchwomen holding something large and heavy and pink, with an attached note. It struggled. They set fire to part of it, and hurled the object through Brian's van’s window.
The other van braked wildly and zoomed down an off-ramp and away. Brian's van swerved wildly from the weight of the note anchor.
“Aah! Jeeves! Get us under control!” bellowed Mr. Labcoat.
The van stabilized once more. Brian looked down at the note anchor now sprawled across his lap. “Hang on.” He looked closer. “…A person.” Closer still. “Just a sec. I recognize you. Isn’t this…?”
It was. Silvio Berlusconi, wearing a burning bra. “Aah! Fire!” Mr. Labcoat let rip with a fire extinguisher, rendering van visibility zero. Berlusconi struggled against his hogtie handcuffs and ball-gag. The van started to swerve once more.
The van hit the highway’s hard shoulder and clattered to a halt. Through the thinning extinguisher smoke, Mr. Labcoat plucked the note from where it was wedged between Berlusconi’s buttocks. He read. “WE WILL HAVE OUR CARESSERS OR YOU WILL HAVE A GRAND CANYON WHERE YOUR SCROTUM WAS.”
Inside the Hosbeforebros van, its pair of operatives fired up a Skype call to Mirren. “Yeah. You were right,” one of them said to her. “Good idea of yours, keeping tabs on that plane what snatched Mister Carren away from us.”
“Yes. Of course it was, I thought of it, that’s why you’re there, monitoring Carren's Badass mates.” Mirren growled. “He thought he could give us a little taste, then snatch away not only our Caressers, but our money too. Well?”
“Yes boss?”
“What’s he up to?”
“Dunno boss.”
“You don’t know? Why did you contact me? Do your job! Find out!”
“Uh yes boss.”
A pause.
“Well?”
“Yes boss?”
“Keep tracking Carren.”
“Yes boss. Sorry boss.”
The Skype window flickered to blank as Mirren hung up on them. Another pause.
“Oh that’s right,” one of the henchwomen grunted. “Carren's at the Badass jumpship pad. Off to meet Phelps. We were gonna tell the boss.” She dialed Mirren once more.
Mirren appeared again, looking furious. “WHAT.”
“Boss. Carren's off to see Phelps.”
Helen Mirren paused. Her fury receded to mere anger, then morphed into determination. “Oh he is, is he? Hah. As we surmised. Just a sec, my dears.”
Mirren turned to address various figures behind her. Either side of her head, the two henchwomen could see the interior of some large building. It throbbed with activity and was packed with large arrays of spiky-looking equipment, commandos, troops, but more importantly, large numbers of teched-up, beweaponed figures looking oddly like Cindy Crawford. “Oi!” she shouted to a few of them. “Carren-Phelps rendezvous confirmed. We will crush not only him but his allies too. Saddle up, girls, we’re finally off to war!” The activity-throbbing throbbed still more actively.
She turned back to the two henchwomen. “Phelps has a weakness for Cindy Crawford, it turns out, and magics his attackers into clones of her, so some of the lab girls started manufacturing fake Crawford moles. Instant disguise. Watch this.” Mirren held up a finger to her laptop’s camera. On it was a microscopic little blip of a cosmetic mole. She pressed it to her upper lip. Bam. Crawford.
“Not bad, eh?” Mirren transmogrified back into herself as she peeled off the fake mole. “Hah.” She chuckled. “If only the UK navy had battleship moles, amIrite?”
Brian glanced around him, wrinkled his nose and tried not to inhale. Dear god, what a dump. Behind him and increasingly above him, the scramjet engines of the Badass dropship that’d dumped him at his destination whined skyward with vertical thrust. The wingèd lozenge shot upward and punched through the horrible syrupy smog layer constantly fed from the gaseous sludge emitted from the Sin piles piled everywhere. It vanished with a gurgle.
Before him lay Phelps’s fortress. A dank, turgid affair, slumping with his evil, all earwax and leather and Astroturf and gorse. It blended in perfectly with the environment generated around itself – dark, crackly skies, howling wasteland, tumbleweed, alkali pools, bleached skeletons. Amidst these lay the Sin piles.
Brian kicked at one. It was a hundred-metre-high pyramid of ‘70s Playboy mags. The next one was a great big prickly pile of hen party penis straws; adjoining it was a mighty stack of VHS recordings of The A-Team episodes. Ohh, of course, Brian thought, this is what Phelps thinks is sinful, he’s ridding the world of it and gathering it here. All the more reason to seduce his evil from the world, eh? He cracked his knuckles, blew on his fingertips, rubbed his hands, and narrowed his eyes at the fortress. Let’s get started.
A great rumbling as of many many wheeled machines and hobnailed boots, arriving from some way behind, pricked up his ears. Holding the armoured Clit-Caresser briefcase still handcuffed to his left wrist well above the Sin fumes, he clambered around the nearest Sin pile to investigate.
A Hosbeforebros army approached. Tens of thousands of Crawford clones marched in formation, brandishing many fearsome weapons, followed by tanks and mobile artillery and supply trucks and the army’s centerpiece, the German WW1-era Big Bertha artillery piece. At its head was Helen Mirren, wearing Raquel Welch’s Cavewoman costume with easy pride. “Strength, girls, strength!” she bellowed. “Phelps’s fortress of sexism will be crushed by sundown.”
Aha, thought Brian, this is my chance! Quickly, grab a uniform and infiltrate! He stole silently past a few of the more trailing ranks of henchwomen, plucked a cosh from the bandoliers of equipment the Badass operatives insisted he wear, clonked a straggler on the head, noticed her artificially conspicuous Crawford-mole, removed it with curiosity, wet himself slightly with shock as the henchwoman flolloped back into her original shape beneath him, cocked an eyebrow as he realised the mole’s power, applied it to his own face, whipped out a hand mirror from the same bandolier, and examined his Crawford’d reflection with pleasant surprise. Hah. Perfect. Even better than I’d thought.
He hurried over to the Hosbeforebros army, bold as you like, and snuck in amongst them.
A crackly rumble emanated from Phelps’s fortress. The front gate swung open. Phelps emerged, borne by a ceremonial litter of two hundred and fifty-six Playboy Bunnies.
He saw the oncoming Crawford-army and his mouth fell open with astonished delight. “Oh wow! Is this delivery?”
The army blustered closer, trying to get him within range of their guns. Mirren nodded at her subordinates. “….Wwwwait for it….”
Fred Phelps walked up to what he thought were ten thousand Cindy Crawfords, batting their eyelashes coquettishly at him and flashing shy smiles. He grinned lecherously, bounded up to the nearest one and tried to lick her cheek.
Mirren roared with fury and dodged his grasping tongue. “FIRE, SISTERS!” She and quite a few other soldiers unloaded the magazine of the machine guns they were carrying into his stomach. He groaned in pain, staggered back, and collapsed into a particularly corrosive alkali pool. It discoloured.
“Ha ha! We triumph!” bellowed Mirren. She and her cronies thrust their guns skyward in glee.
Phelps’s head snapped upward in fury. Fire belched from his eyes. The gunshot wounds on his abdomen slithered shut. He scrambled upright and held his left hand up. His Evil Bible materialized. Electric fire cascaded from his right.
The front ranks of the Hosbeforebros army tumbled back in terror, then the army as a whole advanced in grim anger, brandishing and firing their weapons all at once.
From behind the army proper. Brian squinted at the battle. Huh, he pondered, will Hosbeforebros do my own job for me?
Evidently not. The element of surprise now gone, Phelps’s magic powers easily caught and froze each and every bullet, shell and rocket fired at him. Great curtains of expended ordnance hung motionless and glinting in what little sunlight squidged through the smog layer above. He beat the army back with great magic tsunamis of odiousness and contempt.
Shit, Brian thought from the safety of his hidey hole, he can overpower entire armies? There’s no way I’m getting out of this alive, is there?
He glanced down at his handcuffed briefcase, Clit-Caressers inside. Let’s see now, old boy, let us weigh up the options.
Option One: I run away from here right now and have a furious Mirren hound me for a few days or weeks – there’s no way she’ll allow even Phelps to kill her, she’ll escape and regroup – then she’ll catch me and skin me alive. Yay.
Option Two: I charge Phelps and seduce him but probably losing my life in the process. Ugh.
Brian pondered. Agonizing death versus glorious death. Hm.
He looked up. The Hosbeforebros army retreated slightly, evidently attempting to regroup and attack once more. Various engineers brought their Big Bertha cannon online. Its barrel smouldered with barely-harnessed power.
Brian pounced. Fuckit. Now’s my chance! Getting a good grip on his hostage-briefcase, he sprinted through the army’s shattered front ranks and confronted Phelps.
“Why hello there,” he smarmed, twirling a strand of his long brunette hair around his fingers.
“I don’t know who the hell you people are,” snarled Phelps at him, “but the Crawford disguise is kaput. Don’t you dare impersonate my lovely. You’re not even wearing a leopardskin bikini! Pathetic!” He thrust his right hand back, the better to cast terrible fire on Cindy! Brian.
“But I am!” Brian squeaked in what he thought might possibly kinda-sorta be her voice.
“What?”
“I am Cindy Crawford! Help me, Fred, I’m scared!” ad-libbed Brian. Hell, why not, I’m on a roll, and this seems to be working. “Save me from these scary women!” He clutched his chest in the area of what he guesstimated his Crawford-disguise would make Phelps perceive as breasts, and rolled them back and forth in his hands, Morse-cleavaging at him.
Phelps’s eyes narrowed in skepticism. A millisecond later his features relaxed into a rather arrogant-looking easy swagger. “Of course I will, sweetcheeks. Come to papa.”
Brian turned on his high-heel, popped one of the aforementioned rear-pills gifted earlier by Mr. Labcoat, and wiggled his bottom provocatively at Phelps. “Come get me, you big sausage, I’m all yours! I want you inside me. Right now.”
Ugh, not proud of that, he thought, but it’ll have to do – and hey, looks like it’s working! Something whoomphed in his sphincter muscles. He felt energized.
“Wahey! You’re on!” Another whoomph.
Phelps undid his belt. A third whoomph. Brian looked over his shoulder, smiled, hand on mouth, and wiggled his bottom again.
Phelps entered Brian. He grinned in pleasure. A second later his grin turned to shock. “Uh-what? Aargh! This really hurts!”
Thanks to Mr. Labcoat’s pills, Brian now had a sphincter like a cigar cutter. “Aargh! Let me go you monster!” It acted like a cock ring, clamping Phelps’s erection in place.
“Hah! Got you!” Brian crowed. Wow! These pills are the dog’s bollocks.
And on cue, with a cute little ding, the briefcase handcuffs snapped open. Brian quickly opened the thing. Inside, as promised, were four gleaming-new Laser Fusion Stealth Clit-Caressers.
All around them, the murky gloom turned brilliant strobe-white as the Hosbeforebros army, now finishing their regrouping, opened fire with every weapon they had.
“Holy shit, let me disengage, they’re attacking us! They’ll beat us!” Phelps whined. He shook and struggled and bucked like a rodeo horse. Brian, trying his best to pick up the Clit-Caressers, was pulled from left to right and fumbled them. Just in time, Phelps’s right hand snapped upward and halted the incoming munitions in their tracks.
Phelps screamed with rage. “LET ME GO YOU ASSHOLE”
Brian scrambled around to pick up the Caressers, grabbing two. “Never!” he finally addressed Phelps. “You’re not getting away!”
Phelps shoved Brian forward. “I KILL YOU–” He spied the other two Caressers. “Wait, what’s this?” He grabbed them.
The two of them turned all four Caressers on at once. A radiant glow of sex-sweat bathed all present. The thousands of furious henchwomen doing their attacking stopped in their tracks, mouths hanging open.
Big Bertha rumbled forward and toward the lines of soldiers separating it and Brian/Phelps. Pay dirt, Brian thought, eyeing its barrel. No way Phelps will survive being shot from that. Now or never, baby.
He sprinted toward, charging toward the Hosbeforebros battalion ranks at high speed, Phelps dangling behind Brian by his cock, swirling around in his slipstream like an inside-out umbrella. “Aieee!”
Brian cannoned into the battalion front lines, dual-wielding his Caressers. So did Phelps. Balls-deep in Brian, the two of them brandished the four Caressers like General Grievous’s four lightsabres in Revenge of the Sith. Great tsunamis of beweaponed henchwomen tried to swarm them, and then melted off the pair like Cumberbitches at a Sherlock Holmes convention.
The Big Bertha engineers loaded the beastie, ready to fire upon them both. Mirren in particular, seeing the battle, scampered up the side of the immense cannon, taking great care not to wrinkle her Raquel Welch Cavewoman costume, and commandeered the aiming mechanism. The barrel swiveled.
At last the ranks broke. Dragging a shrieking Phelps, Brian leaped toward the Big Bertha barrel, jumping inside. At the last second, just before vanishing from view, he grinned and winked at Helen Mirren, brandishing his two Caressers.
Before she realised her beloved Clit-Caressers were vanishing from sight and from existence, Mirren fired. A tornado of plasma erupted from the barrel, atomizing Brian and Phelps both. Its shell impacted and tore into the ground from which Brian made his barrel-leap, bounced, and smacked into Phelps’s fortress. It exploded.
Mirren twigged. No more Caressers! She shrieked in anguish. “Aargh! Brian Carren!” She beat her fists on Big Bertha’s barrel. “You horrible bastard, I will trash your memory forever!”
The atomized former-Kale wafted into the smog-sludge above.
A shaft of light graced the battlefield. The smog layer rent and tore as Phelps’s stench of evil dissolved into nothingness. The smog swirled and diminished into standard rainclouds.
Something pattered into the dusty ground beside Mirren. Her fist slowly dropped as her attention moved to it. Again, something paffed into the sand from above, same size and shape, making a little crater.
Mirren peered at it. Something small and plasticky and shiny. She prodded it. It whirred. She hot-flushed and lost her balance.
Other henchwomen noticed the same things raining around them. They looked puzzled, then hot-flushed also.
Phelps’s Brian-flavoured evil-stench-clouds were raining Extra-Scrumptious bullet vibrators.
No comments:
Post a Comment