Thrum-thrum-thrum and whooooosh.
Thrum-thrum-thrum and whooooosh.
That was really fucking annoying.
Grebok’s first instinct to stave off the tickling elves of awakedness was to squeeze his eyes shut tighter. That always works, he lied.
Thrum-thrum-thrum and whooooosh.
When his purely scienceless process did not, in fact, work, Grebok thought, You just can’t trust science. He could no more hold onto unconsciousness than he could a cloud, or grab an armload of 38 helium balloons while eating an ice cream cone. Maybe 37, but 38? It couldn’t be done.
Decided, he let his eyes flutter open like dark little butterflies alighting on a squishy, eye-shaped flower. As his vision swam into focus he found he very much wanted to close his eyes again. Possibly forever.
Thrum-thrum-thrum and whooooosh.
Millions of multi-colored little tubes and attendant wires sprawled beyond the vanishing point in every direction. They branched off wildly only to collide into one another and branch again, and again, and again. Thousands of millions of billions of lines, fragments, rays and points overlapped each other endlessly. Tiny pinprick stars winked and blinked in the distance.
Grebok struggled to take it all in. He latched onto the closest comparison: space (or the family trees of certain Miradorian noble houses). It was like he was stuck inside of a Transgalactic navigational star-chart. He watched as a new ray cut its way across the rest before blossoming into a point then exploded into a firework of microfilament fingers.
It occurred to him he might be in fucking space without any gear on. He sucked in a heavy, panicked breath and held it as his protection against implosion, or explosion, or his eyeballs freezing, or whatever that Miradorian Naval instructor had been yelling about when Grebok kindly offered to open the airlock after Ensign Lorgmor had cut some serious cheese in the cramped cabin.
Thrum-thrum-thrum and whooooosh.
The sounds were caused by the coruscating comings and goings of stuff within these tubes and wires. Space didn’t make any noise, said some science stuff in the back of Grebok’s mind. Outer space also wasn’t littered with tubes to the best of his recollection. Even though his eye-tightening hypothesis had failed, Grebok was pretty sure this new information was correct. He let out his breath and didn’t freeze—in fact, he was a little hot.
Other thoughts started to occur to him. Like where the hell was this if it wasn’t space, and how is it he got here? Last he remembered he was punching some pirate punk, showing him what a little four-knuckled justice tasted like. He glanced around at his more immediate surroundings and couldn’t find Chuckles… nor his own lower half. He just ended in the middle.
That’s when he began to scream.
Not a girly scream, mind. This was a very masculine scream (which didn’t actually make it any better). It was made worse still by the introduction of several pairs of LED lights that came alive nearby.
First one pair.
Then another.
And another.
Then four more pairs blinked to life around him.
Like little eyes, he thought amid his primal outcry. No, exactly like eyes, he corrected as he saw the oddly serpentine, metallic… creatures they were attached to. They swished their tails in what Grebok felt was a threatening manner. He continued his regimen of screaming, and added blind flailing to his agenda.
The metal serpents began to swim closer. A series of insect-like arms unfolded from their bodies, ending in silicone blades.
He sucked in some more air and turned that air right back around into more hollering and carrying on. It had all the nobility one would expect.
Something grabbed his ankle. His ankle that wasn’t presently attached to his body as far as he could tell. He began kicking his—potentially entirely theoretical—legs, kicking something square in its unseen face.
The serpent-insect-metal-scary-things swam closer, little LED lights blinking from white to yellow to red.
Both his invisible legs were wrangled together down in Hell or wherever they were. The demons he pictured in his mind began tugging on them violently.
The things—he had settled on just calling them that, things—drew ever closer with their featureless faces, their blinky lights, and their pointy arms. The closest of them started spinning like a drill.
His lower half was tugged… tugged… tugged.
Thrum-thrum-thrum and whoooooosh.
The drill serpents, squirming near.
Tug. Tug.
Closer. He could feel the breeze of the drill’s movement as it drew near to bore into his handsome face.
Thrum-thrum-thrum and thoomp!
The comparatively mild thoomp came with a falling sensation, which ended in a “landing on someone” feeling.
No spinning drill serpents. No rushing tubes and wires cascading into infinity. And blessedly no more thrumming and whooshing. Considerably more grunting and cursing though, he noted.
“Gitoffa’me!” The familiar voice of Lord Chuckles came from a writhing body beneath him.
Grebok rolled off of his friend, whom he confirmed with a glance.
“Hey! It’s fucking crazy out there,” he announced.
His companion and fellow hero frowned over at him and pushed himself to his feet. “I suppose I should be glad that you have your upper half back,” the Avatar grumbled.
Grebok took in his surroundings. “Are we…?” He stopped in a rare moment of analysis. He carefully selected his next set of words so as to sound extra smart. “Are we on some giant chick’s butt?” He rushed to rub his chin thoughtfully afterward.
Lord Chuckles nodded. “Or at least a picture of it.” He knocked on the flat surface below them. Indeed it resembled an oddly familiar girl-tuchus wrapped in red pleather.
The Son of Drogmar climbed the rest of the way to his feet.
“I think I know this giant broad,” he whispered, afraid that said giant would hear him. (Yes, despite it already having been established as a picture.)
“She was on that pirate dick’s wall,” Chuckles confirmed with a surly look. He wiped some blood creeping down from a single nostril.
“You look like somebody kicked you in the face,” Grebok opined.
Lord Chuckles opened his mouth to respond and thought better of it. He also unclenched his fist, figuring no good would come of that either. “As much as I could hang out on this girl’s vinyl booty for… well, ever, I have a creepy feeling she’s underage and we should probably find a way to make progress in any direction.”
Upon hearing he might be criminally trespassing on a giant teenager’s bum, Grebok got up on his tip toes as if this somehow lessened his imagined offense. “Yeah, well, don’t go out there….” He pointed toward the ceiling, but nothing was there. No space, no sprawling galaxies of tubes, wires, blackness and stars. No metal, snake, insect, drill things. It was a black, semi-opaque glass ceiling. If he squinted real hard it seemed to show through to the pirate captain’s quarters. “Hunh?”
“Because it’s fucking crazy?” Lord Chuckles finished the Son of Drogmar’s previous thought. This received a distant nod confirming its correctness. “As I feared.” The self-proclaimed Avatar of Good tightened several straps and belts and tugged his frock straight. “We better get going.”
Grebok looked in each direction. No doors, portals, windows or open planes featured in any of them. “Go where?”
“This way,” Chuckles pointed, with what he hoped was some authority, toward the pop star’s high heels. It was completely random, selected merely for the effect of turning fully around. Very dramatic and powerful, he felt.
It worked on Grebok, who shrugged and nodded back. “Yeah, I mean, fuck. Why not.”
Fuck, why not, indeed.
