..:: Written .:. Off ::..

The following story is my second contribution to the Tastes of the Darkness Blog Carnival. The them this time is betrayal. I have to admit that I really didn't feel like doing a straight horror this time around, so I settled for a little Science Fiction/Horror.

The following story is called The Sucker. It is the prequel to a Sci-Fi story that I wrote about a month ago, called The Eater.

T H E S U C K E R

One of my ex-girlfriends once described me as the kind of person who never has a pen. Tis’ true. I seem to be perpetually ill equipped in every given situation.

Take my current predicament. I’m crouched on the lid of a toilet in the bathroom of The Abyss, most notorious smuggler bar on Primus II. When I cocked the pistol that was wrapped in my clammy palms, the trigger popped off and clinked onto the tile.

Someone had set me up or at least hated me enough to want me dead. Maybe it was the Dex dealer who tipped me off to the spice merchant interested in the dozen illegal tallow fish I needed to unload. Or was it that waitress I stiffed at The Kat House, who knew that I was the only smuggler in town without any real back up. I looked down at the broken pistol and wondered if the merchant, who sold it to me knew that it was a busted. Here’s a piece of advice for you, never buy a gun that wasn’t made on Earth. We invented them and have been killing each other with them for ages.

Or.

Maybe it was the bad luck that ran in my family that got me into these situations. My mother said that it was a genetic flaw on my father’s side. “It skips a generation”, she would say. “Your father’s father had the mark and so do you.” The mark that she referred to was on the back of my neck. I’ve only seen it once since I need to use about four mirrors to view it. It was a birthmark that resembled a hand holding up a middle finger (at least, that’s what I thought it looked like).

Lucky me, eh?

I tensed as I heard the knob on the bathroom door turn. I was being pursued by a Zed. An alien. An organ grinder. The Zed were a race of bulbous and squishy aliens who made their money selling the body parts of other aliens. Blood Merchants. It was also rumored that they had a taste for human livers. Something in the organ made them trip out. Freaky universe, isn’t it?

The Zed used some sort of holographic projection trickery to make them resemble whatever race they were trying to impersonate. This one looked human. When I met the spice merchant tonight, I had him sussed from the beginning. I’ve had dealings with the Zed in the past; dealings that I’d rather not talk about at this time, thanks.

No matter how convincing the Zed disguise was, they could never get the language right. This one kept dragging the last word of each sentence that it spoke. I kept calling me “Jaxxsssssssss” instead of Jaxx. Its mannerisms were all out of whack too. When I went to shake his hand, it put out the wrong hand. It also kept shifting around the chair and seemed confounded by the straw sticking out of the drink it had ordered.

I played along for a few minutes but excused myself from the table as soon as we ordered dinner. It gave me a cold look when I departed, and I knew that it was aware of the failed ruse.

As the Alterians said, I was fuct.

The door creaked open and someone scuffled inside. When the lights died, I was glad to be close to a toilet. I held onto the pistol even though it was broken, hoping I could at least use it to bluff.

“Jaxxssssss?”

I said nothing.

“Jaxx, I know you are herrrrrre.” There were scraping footfalls coming closer to the stall.

“Don’t worry….wheeze can seeze you in the darkkkkkkk.”

There was a foomph sound and I knew that it must have shut off its holographic projector. I was almost glad that it was dark. Just seeing a Zed in its true form was enough to send you into brown trouser country.

I turned the gun around in my hand so that I was holding the barrel and cursed my Great Grandfather for passing down his unlucky genes to me. If the Zed got anywhere near me, I would bash it into the next life.

I heard a slithering sound near the stall door. I held the gun up, ready to strike when something spattered all over my face. The goddamned thing spit on me!

“Jesus! What did you do to me?” I yelled, slipping off the toilet seat and falling hard onto the bathroom floor.

“Jaxx. I know I would find youuuuuu. I hope that you are feeling okayyyyyyy. We would not want to damage that fat, juicy liver of yourssssss.”

The spit my face was sticky and burned my skin. I could actually feel my pours absorbing it. I began to feel lightheaded. “You piece of shit!” I yelled but I had to admit, the sensation was not unpleasant. I knew people that paid big money to feel like this.

I heard the stall door kick open but I didn’t care at that point. The drug had clouded my mind and I felt was if I was floating away. Something rubbery wrapped around my ankles and began to drag me out of the stall.

“Don’t worry Jaxxxssss. We won’t eat your liverrrrrr. At least not yetttttttt.”

As I drifted deep into haze, I mustered a smile, knowing that I’d abused my liver enough over the years with drug and drink that it would probably kill the Zed after the first bite.

I may never have a pen, but at least I can look at the bright side of life.