If this keeps up, eventually someone is going to sneak up on us that possesses both a gun that works and the ability to shoot straight and then we’ll be dead. When I was a kid I saw a segment on Hard Copy or some other newsplotation program about how in these modern times everyone’s senses are so dulled by TV and cheap beer that murderers can sneak up on you all day every day.
Their dramatic reenactment example was a guy sleeping in a La-Z-Boy while another guy started a chainsaw right by his head and La-Z-man didn’t even wake up. It scared me at the time because I was ten, but when I got older I realized it was moronic. Now I’m starting to wonder if there was more truth to it than I thought. These future people keep walking right up on Martialla and me like they’re stealthy little voles. We keep saying one of us should always be on watch but then we don’t do it. I blame Martialla. She’s the chief of security.
Martialla hit the deck, taking cover behind J-Lo, but I whirled around at the sound, which I admit is not a good reaction to being shot at. Standing right at J-Lo’s ass end was a hunched little future dude with an overly large mouth and way too many nostrils. He had some kind of zip gun that was wrapped up in rags and/or furs. What’s the point of that? Was his gun cold and needed a little coat? A few yards behind him straddling a bike that looked so heavy and awkward that I can’t understand how you could even ride the thing was his partner, who looked a little like Sam the Eagle from the Muppets on account of his bluish skin and hooked nose.
Nostrils punched his gun forward at me like he was trying to throw bullets out of it instead of shooting them but nothing happened. Luckily for me since I was standing there with my mouth open like a moron and he would have shot me down if his gun fired and the bullet traveled anywhere close to true. Which it would not based on his first attempt.
At this point I did a very stupid thing. Instead of ducking down behind our armored killmobile, I came around the side and lunged at nostrils like an osprey grabbing a baby seal. I don’t know why I did this. It was just what I did in the moment. It’s like that time when I was roller-skating at Susie Brecklenmeyer’s birthday party and I tripped Sam Lickwuthering when he came whipping around by me. I had nothing against Sam, I barely even knew Sam, I just stuck my foot out in that moment without thinking. It was pure instinct. He landed on his face. I felt bad about it afterwards. When my mom asked me why I did it, I couldn’t say because I didn’t know. I just did it.
Nostril’s eyes went so wide as I came at him that I thought they might pop out of his skull and roll under my feet to trip me, some kind of defense mechanism like a sea cucumber barfing up his own stomach or a bonnacon letting fly with its vortex of deadly combustible feces. Constrastally (that’s a word now I’ve decided) his many nostrils zipped closed like a turtle retreating into its shell. I grabbed his hand/arm with the “gun” and when I shoved it back, I heard snapping noises just like when I kicked Redlight in the chest. Does everyone in the future have brittle bone disease or what? You know, I was supposed to play the woman on the train Brue Willis flirts with in the opening of Unbreakable but I got stuck in Veracruz because of the flooding. I was down there filming Skullhunter 3 – Timesword. So instead of a small part in a 250 million dollar movie, I got to be the lead in that piece of shit.
I didn’t have too much time to feel bad about breaking the arm of a guy trying to kill me though, because his (not very good) friend on the bike turned the wheel of his bike towards me and fired a mounted weapon of some kind that made him explode. I called it a cannon and Martialla pedantically said that it was a large-bore, short-barreled blunderbuss not a cannon. She always has to have the last word. Why couldn’t I have gotten trapped in the future with one of my other friends? Probably because I don’t have any other friends.
It’s a good thing I was crouched over a little, otherwise the shrapnel blast would have ripped my face off. Instead, Nostrils took the entirety of the shredding. I guess I’m lucky that it was a scattergun and not something with a solid shot that would have gone through both of us, instead I was saved by my human(oid) shield. While I stumbled back and fell down with a bloody blanket of skin and little pieces of muscle over me, Martialla popped up with her pistol on the roof of the car and fired a couple shots at the motorcycle Eagle. I guess she must have missed because instead of dying, he ponderously turned his massive bike around and blasted off with a jet of flame like the god damn Batmobile. She watched him drive off but didn’t fire again. Taking her sweet time, eventually she wandered over and helped me out from under what was left of the dead man and to my feet.
I spat several hundred times “I think some pineal gland went in my mouth.”
“Well don’t swallow it, according to Descartes the pineal gland is the seat of the human soul.”
“If true wouldn’t that mean I should want to swallow it to gain the strength of the fallen?”
“He didn’t seem very strong to me.”
“Hey, every little bit helps right?”
