Other Fan Fiction / Romance Fan Fiction / Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ The Adventures of Thad Gunter ❯ Passing Out ( Chapter 8 )

THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF THAD GUNTER!!!

 

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Chapter 8: Passing Out

 

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“So, I'm thinking, `Shit, I'm fucked.' I mean, Mallomar the Cimmerian has got me in a headlock, right, and Pysskock the Cyclops is just kicking the crap outta' me. Just wailing on me, like a drunk sailor wails on a dead hooker, okay? I mean, I'm taking a bruising.”

 

Flatulence the Barbarian, in all his waxed biceps, shirtless, pecs a glistening, crowned, sword drawn glory, paused his tale-telling for a moment, as he flicked an inch of ash of the tip of his cigar. He put down the ciggie, rearranged the set of cards in his hand, and scratched his genitals through his bear skin speedo before continuing.

 

“Anyway, I really ain't sure what to do. I mean, I hadn't been in a situation like that since I arm-wrestled C'thulu at Wrestlemania XIIV.”

 

Flatulence chuckled and nodded at the silent mass of vaguely human shaped, living swamp vegetation sitting across from him.

 

“You remember that, don'cha, Man-Thingy?”

 

Man-Thingy, his red unearthly eyes gleaming beyond the dangling vines and rotten plants that made up his face, remained completely hushed, doing nothing but gripping a selection of damp, strangely smoldering, playing cards in his root like claws.

 

The barbarian, unaware of his gaming partner's unresponsiveness, continued rambling on incoherently. The third member of the poker game, a four foot tall anthropomorphized duck dressed in a rather lawyer-like blue suit and pants, also chomping at a cigar as well as swigging vulgarly from a tumbler of whisky, spoke, sounding not completely unlike the Wikipedia speak feature.

 

“Horse shit.”

 

Flatulence paused and glared at the cartoon duck.

 

“Excuse me?”

 

The duck continued, “You're really just making all of this up.”

 

The nearly naked warrior threw down his cards and put a hand on his sword's hilt. “Do you dare challenged my honor, Mr. Jonah the Duck? A barbarian that has had as many adventures as I would have no need for fabricating weird tales!”

 

The pond bird quipped again. “Yeah, I definitely think your weird tales are made-up.”

 

Flatulence the Barbarian's lower lip quivered in Silent Rage. He let out an ancient battle cry, raised his giant blade above his head, and prepared the slice the water fowl into pieces.

Man-Thingy, aroused (but not, you know, in a sexy way) by the violent emotions in the room, sprung from his chair, far quicker then his appearance would ever make evident. His talons shot across the table, grabbing the warrior's wrists as well as the duck's shoulders. Both persons looked to the suddenly agile swamp monsters, startled.

 

The monster's beady vision orbs looked to the barbarian.

 

Flatulence, uncertain for once, spoke to the creature, “What? I wasn't going to hurt him that much!”

 

An acidic chemical oozed from Man-Thingy's palm, strongly stinging the rampager's flesh. He yelped childishly and clamed up. The plant creature turned its attention to the equally confused duck.

 

Stumbling for a response, Jonah eventually came out with, “He started it!”

 

Man-Thingy activated the chemical reaction in his second hand, causing burning of the top layer of the duck's feathers and underlying skin. Jonah's reaction was, “Owwie-owwie-ow!”

 

As is the order of things, the monster looked to the fourth member of the party, who could do nothing but look on in horror at everything that had come before. The vegetation-beast's glaring stare demanded some sort of response.

 

Clutching a set of cards to his chest, Dr. Isaac Thaddeus “Thad” “Dude” “Mammy” Edgar Howard Sam Gunter III, Jr. had no idea what to say. He still didn't know where he was, how he got there, or what his accompanying card players' collective beef was. He certainly didn't know what to say to Man-Thingy's unblinking stare or how to response to the violent act that erupted between the horrifyingly macho barbarian and the unnervingly in-human duck thing.

 

Man-Thingy shook his arms again, demanding some sort of answer from Thad. Still, flabbergasted by everything, our hero could only think of one reasonable response:

 

Run away.

 

He dove for the room's door, ignoring the explosion of action that followed from his roommates. Only in his peripheral vision did he make out the confrontation that broke out. He didn't dare look back. He learned that lesson with the Land Shark. Tossing open the door and running out, Thad, once again, immediately regretted his actions.

 

Only blank whiteness surrounded him now, outside of the poker room. Sadly, Thad was not alone there. Before him, only a few meters away, stood stand-up comedian Carrot Top. Behind him, lay the mangled, dismembered, freshly butchered, bleeding corpse of Dane Cook. The living comedian, a large hatchet still dripping with human viscera gripped in his hands, turned to Thad and grinned with a mouth full of fangs and vicious molars. He spoke with the voice of a tiny child.

 

“Welcome to Costco, I love you.”

 

Thad awoke screaming.

 

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Sweat clinging to his brow, heavy breathing, sitting up straight in bed… All the awaking from nightmare clichés were present. Thad observed his surroundings. The magenta wall paper, the two beds with plaid sheets, the shitty medium sized TV in the corner… The surroundings were all too familiar. He was in a shitty hotel room. But how did he get there?

 

After wiping the perspiration from his face and calming down some, Thad decided to put is detective pants on and figure out just how the heck he came to reside in said shitty hotel room. It was only after thinking of that witty phrase did Thad realize that he would really have to put his detective pants on. He'd have to put his detective shirt, detective jacket, detective socks, and detective shoes on. He was stripped down to his skivvies. Slightly more disconcerting then his near nudeness was the collection of bandages and gauze that seem to cover a large percentage of his body. Concerned, he reached for a handheld looking glass that rests atop the television set. Gripping the handle, he raised it to his face and was further shocked by the amount of white, clinging bandages that cover nearly half of his stunning facial features and the brownish, blackish dried blood and scourged flesh beneath. It was right around this time that Thad realized he was in a great deal of pain. A great deal of excruciating pain.

 

For a fact, if he was to rate the amount of pain he was feeling at that moment on a scale of one to ten, he'd rate it an eleven. Thad then remembered that Spinal Tap references were no longer witty and he decided that he should just scream really, really loudly. After that was relatively successful, Thad continued on to the next step in his master plan by falling to the floor and going into violent convulsions. And to conclude this ingenious exercise, he then passed out. Again.

 

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Upon awaking from a stupor for the second time that evening, Thad was greeted with a slightly more pleasant visual then another stodgy hotel room. Looking down at him was a soft, sweet feminine face, light skin, red checks, green eyes, short auburn hair. Thad didn't have the best memory for names but he knew faces and, after a moment of clearing his thoroughly dazed mind, he recognized this one.

 

“You. I remember you.”

 

She spoke, “Rachel. You almost murdered my husband.”

 

Weakly, he raised his still bandaged hand and spoke “Almost brutally beat. I had no intention of murdering him.”

 

She leaned back against the bed and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pockets of her seemingly far too tight jeans. After lighting one up, she continued to speak in her sweetly sardonic voice.

 

“Either way, I shouldn't have stopped you. Turned out, Joe and my stalker friend got a little too close.”

 

The mental image of Joe Doe and the horrible dwarf DJ Silloc in the middle of any of the horrifying karma sutra positions DJ knew of passed through Thad's mind. The visage sent him into mild shock. His muscle stiffening up brought the intense pain the majority of his body was in back to Thad's attention and he decided to have a panic attack later, after he stopped hurting so goddamned much.

 

He was snapped back to reality by Rachel speaking again. “I thought that Silloc dude was straight.”

 

Thad grunted as he repositioned himself, “DJ Silloc prides himself upon his omnisexuality.”

 

After grimacing intensely at her own mental picture, she took a long drag off her cig and decided to change the subject. “So, Thad, was it?”

 

Grunting once again from his general discomfort, he responded, “Yeah, that's what most people call me.”

 

Flicking ash from the cigarette's tip, Rachel decided to face her main query. “So why exactly were you lying around in the middle of the desert, covered from head to toe in second degree burns?”

 

Despite the great amount of hurt it caused, Thad decided the dramatic effect leaning towards her caused was worth it. He whispered mysteriously, doing his best impersonation of any character from a M. Night Shymalon movie.

 

“I have two words for you.”

 

He paused, even more dramatically.

 

“Land. Shark.”

 

Deciding it wasn't worth decoding that cryptic statement, Rachel snuffed out her cig and headed for the kitchen.

 

“You're an extraordinarily fast healer, Thad. You were barely human when I got to you and now you almost look like a person again.”

 

“Really?” This concerned Thad. Was it divine intervention? Had his experiences transformed his metabolical system and increased his healing rates? Or was it all just bad writing? Answers were elusive as ever and he'd rather not think about it, for fear of upsetting the very metaphysical fibers of his existence.

 

Rachel returned, holding out a Road Kill Café mug filled with hot tea. She handed the piping beverage over. Thad, suddenly being very thirsty, drank deeply from the mug, severely scolding his tongue in the process. All things considered, it really hurt the least out of the various maladies afflicting him.

 

He spoke, “It'd dis sum surt of maagitcad heelings teas?”

 

(Author's Note: Oh, Christ, please everybody get that joke. He's saying “Is this some sort of magical healing tea?” Oh, Jesus, if someone doesn't get that joke I'm going to fucking kill myself. I'm having an attack. Where's my Asperser's medication? Oh, Christ, where's my inhaler? WHERE'S MY FUCKING INHALER?!!! MOM!)

 

She looked on at the poor, poor bastard, like one looks at a pitiful rabid dog before putting a bullet through its rotting skull. “No. It's chamomile.”

 

He curled up, cupping the cup with both palms, and “Oh”'d sadly.

 

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The elevator hummed and clanged obscenely as it descended deep into the earth. The moving rod, cogs, gears, pulleys, and levers were thick with rust and crusty from time. Some might suggest that it was simply age that caused these devices to stagger in their performance. That's possible.

 

What is also possible is that, like most everybody else in the world, the elevator was just afraid of its sole occupant. Only the repugnant, Grinch-like demeanor of James Eaalhi could cause inanimate machinery to quiver in terror at his presence. This, undoubtedly, amused him.

 

After nearly fifteen minutes of droning, the elevator unceremoniously jolted to a halt and the doors slid open with all the turgid energy of a lobotomized homeless person. James stepped out onto the chilly concrete. He paused for a moment and considered how far underground he must be. The clattering, ambient noise from the Renn-Tech factories couldn't be heard overhead. For a fact the only noise currently audible to Mr. Eaalhi's ears was a near by rattling. Yes, several miles underground it must be. This far underground, it might appear as if all life on the planet became extinct. It warmed the cockles of James' heart, that thought. It almost made him jump with glee.

 

The inner monologue had gone on long enough. He walked along the smooth pathway, observing the perfect flatness of the structure. Stepping to the left, he entered a room and was greeted by an immediately recognizable smell.

 

“Ashley, did you prepare my tools?” He asked of his slave.

 

The poor deformed creature nodded his hydrocephalic head, raised a wobbly hand, multiple needles already jutting from the skin, and pointed. The simple action caused his left side to start trembling and his foot involuntarily tapped a random tune.

 

James smiled and patted Ass Jenkins on the head, sympathetically. He then left the thing to its own devices, which included twitching, running into walls, and unsuccessfully trying to straighten the bones in his twisted body.

 

All of this went unnoticed by James Eaalhi, who by this point was all ready engrossed in his work. He sat down at his chair and turned a knob on the monitor before him, switching over the program from hardcore midget porn to something much less innocuous. He smiled as the footage played and picked up the unusual, not completely un-Wiimote like device before him. The mad man began to mutter to himself as he pressed the buttons and toggled the switches.

 

“I suppose I'll have to increase my level of manipulation from now on. The target has proved to be far more…” James grimaced as he thought of the appropriate world that properly described his disgust while the Author conferred with his thesaurus, “…obstinate, then I had hoped.”

 

He pressed a finger onto the device and a bright red bar lit up there. He then moved his arm around, manipulating the control through the air. A humming sound hummmmmed its way from the machine and Eaalhi watched the screen, smiling and chuckling.

 

“Yes, that would be perfect, wouldn't it?” He muttered to himself and he continued to mime various acts with the remote.

 

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His poor tongue having recovered, Thad had managed to strike up a slightly somewhat pleasant discussion with his rescuer. Rachel, being in a surprisingly good mood, decided not to tell him to shut the fuck up and politely tolerated his nearly mindless jabbering.

 

“After the Porno Bots blasted me with their teleporting porno waves, I was apparently transposed to this desert here. The Nevada one, you say?”

 

“Yup.” She spoke blankly between sips of her Vodka spiked tea.

 

“I wondered through that desert for what felt like years. It's possible I could have been going around in circles, I was mixed up from that whole teleporting business, but I'm pretty sure I wasn't. And then you won't believe what happened next.”

 

“Let me guess. Land shark?”

 

“How did you know?”

 

“You told me earlier.”

 

Thad felt even more like a heel then before, “I did?”

 

“Yup,” she said again, rising from her chair. “Hey, Thud…”

 

“Thad.” He corrected.

 

“Yeah, you too. You hungry? I am.”

 

He considered for a moment. Granted, food really hadn't been on Thad's mind at the moment. He most of filled up on shoe meat while he was in the desert. But he had been unconscious for a day or so. Munching on, perhaps, some pizza puffs or maybe a canister of Vienna Sausages certainly couldn't do him any harm. Well, maybe the sausages would.

 

“I suppose I should eat something.”

 

“That's just great.” Rachel kneeled over to investigate the mini-fridge that she paid an extra forty dollars for at the front desk. Upon first setting out on her road trip, Rachel hadn't given much thought to how she was going to eat, being unemployed. She hadn't packed any food on this trip, no sandwich fixings, no Spam. For a fact, why was she even looking at the mini-fridge? It was empty. Hmm… It was as if someone was controlling her motions. Hmm.

 

Unbeknownst to Rachel, the mirror that Thad had thumbed earlier that evening was resting on the counter, inauspiciously just above her now hunched over head.

 

Faster than you can say “Deus ex machina,” a stray butterfly that had lost its way after taking a left at Albuquerque fluttered into the room through an open window and, being a insect of slight intellect that favored bright, shiny, and reflective things, rested on the surface of the mirror. Little did that poor, simple creature realize that its weight would be just enough to cause the looking glass to fall from its precarious perch.

 

As if in slow motion, the mirror tumbled through the air between the counter and Rachel's soft, fleshy scalp. She might have noticed this and gotten out of the way in time if it wasn't for the fact that she was very busy crouching over, looking into the empty fridge, and wondering why she was still crouching there, looking into said empty fridge.

 

Her quizzical thoughts were soon silenced and replaced with the distinctive sensation of a plate of glass shattering over her head and embedding jagged shards into her sweet red little head. She did what most reasonable people would do in this situation. She screamed like crazy and grabbed her bloody, gushing head.

 

Thad, who in the bizarrely long amount of time it took Rachel to peruse the kitchen, had dosed off slightly. However, the sound of screaming, bleeding, shattering glass, and, paradoxically, cats meowing, awoke him instantly and, before he realized he was still recovering from serious burns, jumped to his feet. After doing so, Thad remembered he was still recovering from serious burns, and also proceeded to scream.

 

This wasn't helpful to Rachel, who had hoped her boarder would do something other than stare at her blankly. Technically, the yelling and the screaming did classify as more than just staring blankly but it still wasn't helpful to Rachel. Through the pain in her head, she came to a course of action.

 

First, she would bleed profusely. Then she would collapse on the floor. Then she would slip into unconsciousness. Then, she might die. Rachel hoped that wouldn't happen but she didn't rule it out.

 

Once again, Thad didn't know what to do. It had been a rough past couple of days for him. He was a little overwhelmed. Not feeling particularly courageous or resourceful, he did what he always did in situations such as these. Shit his pants and pass out.

 

And, thus, our hero ended up right where he started, passed out in a strange hotel room. Hey, it had been a rough week.

 

 

TO BE CONTINUED!!!

 

Author's Note: Steve Gerber, legendary writer of many great comic books, passed away earlier this month. The opening bit is a direct homage to Mr. Gerber's work and his absurd, sly writing is a big influence on me overall. This chapter is dedicated to his memory.