Visitors by James Elusinius
Doug was about to go out with his friends. He had been invited to go
swimming at WTF (What the fuck.) Chuck’s house for a pool party.
He was about to be delayed a bit.
Doug had put his swimsuit into his backpack and was about to leave
when he saw the curtains move. Startled, he asked “Who’s there?”
A voice replied “You can’t see me. I’ve clouded your mind!”
“My mind isn’t cloudy and its sunny out!” replied Doug.
Just then, a figure appeared. It looked like Little Mark. He was wearing
what looked like an obsidian jumpsuit. Doug looked confused. How did
Little Mark get in? The door was locked. “You’re too small for a cloaking
device.” said Doug, smugly.
“I’m not too small to do this!” said Mark, who then proceeded to pinch
the side of Doug’s neck with his thumb and forefinger. Doug fell down
like a sack of potatoes., unconscious.
“Hot ziggety!” said Little Mark, “It worked!” He had finally learned how
to perform the Chicago nerve pinch. Mark did not rest on his laurels. He
took off an obsidian backpack and proceeded to remove some items.
The boy smiled. Operation Pony Bologna could finally proceed as planned.
There’d be no one to stop him this time!
After a while, Doug’s friends wondered where he had got to when he didn’t
rendezvous with them. Allan, Scott, and Charlie went to Doug’s place to
see what was keeping him.
The boys went to Doug’s house and rang the door. When there was no answer,
Scott got the spare key that Doug’s family kept in a statuette of a tuxedo cat.
When they entered the house they found a surprise in the den.
Doug was not only bound and gagged, he was bound with some rather out
of the ordinary materials. He was trussed with a crisscross of a metallic
mesh material that seemed to completely immobilize him.
As for the gag, it had an amber color and sealed his mouth shut. It didn’t
seem to have any knots or buckles holding it in place. Even though Doug
saw and recognized his friends, he couldn’t utter a peep!
Even though Doug was fettered in unusual tech, the boys seemed to recognize
what it was. Scott was put off by it. “Okay, who’s been using level 3 tech
to tie up Doug?!” he said angrily.
“Wow!” said Charlie. “Those bonds look like Lesbium. And that gag looks
like flow plast.” “Somebody really wants Doug quiet and out of the way!”
“That stuff isn’t even from our dimension!” said Allan. “How are we going to get
him loose?” Lesbium could be beamed with a laser and not get lukewarm. If
they tried to get the gag off, it would just reconfigure itself.
All in all, it was worse than tying Doug’s hands to his belt by several orders
of magnitude. It just wasn’t fair!
Meanwhile, it wasn’t playtime in the Rockies for Doug. The bonds
weren’t painful, but he couldn’t move a muscle. Not only did the gag
silence him, but all he could think was mmmph, mmmph, or miffle
giffle!” It was as if his mind was gagged as well.
“Well, we could rig up a wire in a stasis field and cut him loose
that way.” suggested Charlie helpfully. Scott really didn’t like
that option “I don’t want my best friend sliced, diced or julienned!”
he retorted.
While the boys were discussing how to free their friend from seemingly
inescapable restraint, they saw a table overturn, and then a wastebasket
fly into the air and empty itself.
With some ashes from the basket spread out, it appeared two figures
were wrestling with each other. The normally unflappable Allan shouted
“No blasters! This isn’t our house!”
Suddenly, Mark de-cloaked. So did his opponent, who looked like
a metal android. The boys gasped. “Little Mark!” shouted Scott.
“Who the hell is the metal guy,” said Allan.
The metal guy was Robo-Ronnie. The boy they thought was Little
Mark was actually Meglo Mark, would be ruler of the multiverse!
“Mom wants you to come home.” said Robo-Ronnie. “Nobody’s
going to hurt you.”
Meglo Mark began to cry. “I didn’t mean to blow you up!” he
said, anguished.
He had accidentally discorporated Ronnie when he was experimenting
with a phase generator. Fortunately, Ronnie’s Boy Scout troop knew
how to transfer his consciousness into an android boy.
“Our health insurance covers body loss. They’re growing me a new
one.” assured Ronnie. “We’re not even going to send you to juvie!”
Single payer is wonderful, isn’t it!
Of course Mark would be placed in therapy. It was a case of boys
will be boys and kids don’t do this at home!
“So how are we going to get Doug loose?” inquired Scott gently.
As an answer, Robo-Ronnie went over to Doug and used his sonic
scout knife to free him. He then pressed a button on the device that
played the first bars of “Bang Bang Lulu” that caused the flow plast
gag to extract itself from Doug’s mouth. Both the bonds and the
gag folded themselves into a little pouch.
Allan asked Doug if he was okay. Doug began to reply in a language
called Esperanto. It was just a side effect of the gag that would soon pass.
Ronnie prepared to take his prodigal little brother back to their home
dimension 64XKE. Before they teleported back, Robo-Ronnie told
the boys that someone was going around their neighborhood tagging
rude phrases in Minoan linear B.
“I didn’t do that.” said Meglo Mark truthfully. “Its some guy named
Little Loki.”
Doug seemed to be okay after his ordeal. What his friends didn’t
know was that Meglo Mark had left a few post hypnotic suggestions
that could be triggered by seeing the queen of diamonds playing card.
They were nothing horrific, but on occasion, Doug would pop up
and say “ bonvolu ligi min”.
The boys finally got to WTF Chuck’s. Doug then
surprised everyone by putting on a pair of ruby
red speedos and singing “I Feel Pretty” from
Westside Story to Chuck’s Pomeranian Squeekers. It was actually
well received and got Doug invited to join the local boy’s glee club.
End