SPACE NOIR BAR by Mike Marino (top books to read txt) 📖

pinata and spilled out, falling and bouncing down the streets to hinder our quest for the Falcon.

All of the Red Zeppelin gang members had the same vacant look. Crazed and deranged thanks to the popular street drug known simply as Kardashian Buttocks. It was scene out of my favorite hologram movie “Clockwork Kubrick Goes to the Circus” where Lenny Bruce has junkie juice flowing hot and steamy, and he is dealing from the bottom of a marked deck of cards at a pharmaceutical convention, with unconventional doctors in attendance, wearing togas stolen from New York City bath house locker rooms with fat sweaty Greeks and those from the Baltics with secret rings...eating lunch naked with William Burroughs and a typewriter with keys that stick and ribbons that were worn and faded.

Even the junkettes, the young gang girls were strung out, but my imagination allowed me a libido laden gander at nubile puberty ready breasts just peeking above the skin with a pink nipple tipped volcano cane ready to erupt with passion as pubic hair began to sprout it's fertile garden below. It was an erotic Robotian visual voyeuristic symphony performed by an orchestra of puberty creating a variation of a hypodermic dream version of the War of 1812 Overture for the libido literate. Except for the needle tracks on their arms and cold turkey sweats I’d fuck one.

Hound Dog himself was no prize either. He was notorious in this pus filled little proletarian pool, and as he approached I could see he was flying high with a jet stream fix in his arm, a communist Com-Red sympathizer, (they paid the most to mercenaries) and his amphetamine adrenaline anxiety was at it’s peak.

“Poontang and Strangelove. My my my,” he chortled with a smile that went from grim to delighted as soon as he saw who they were in the dense smoke that enveloped us like smoked salmon in a fish shop in Marseilles. A cheeky cheek kissing frenzy followed between the trio as pretentious as an over acted scene in which some deranged limp wristed playwright has combined elements of “Richard the Third” and “Deliverance” being presented on stage by a hysterical gender bending theatrical troupe performing perchance in the round of Saturn’s left wing rings.

“And who is this delightful gentleman?” he queried Poontang. I always cringe when a man in gold lame pants and blue eyeliner a little too thick “queries” I decided to take the initiative and go on the offensive. I reached out, grabbed his hand and squeezed it hard, you know manly man grip and pumped it hard. Real dick shit macho crap to intimidate. Unfortunately it backfired on me...his grip was just as strong and the look in his eyes betrayed him. Great, another admirer, but put the brakes on it ladyboy...you’re not gonna put the pedal to the metal with me sweetheart. I could tell by the look on his face...he understood.

“Doc Yucatan” I said firmly. His response was unexpected. “You’re the one that has a 1,000,000 space buck reward on his head by the Com-Reds. The Toho’s aren’t too happy with you either. Any of you. Rewards on all of ya and ha. They also want you alive, or at least one of you, doesn’t matter which one. Hell, they know what you’re looking for. The whole goddamn quadrant knows….it’s the Falcon, and the Rabbit has it...doesn’t she Poontang?”

I didn’t like the tone of his voice as he screamed out her name. “What’s your problem asshole?” His face brightened. “Ah, you are protective I see. Well, let me assure you Yucatan. Poontang is beautiful yes, but even more intriguing is her intellect. She hasn’t told you has she?” At this point he doubled over in laughter.

I leaned towards  Poontang and asked under my breath, “What haven’t you told me, dammit? You know, I had a feeling this whole trip was a bad idea. Like the Edsel or the Corvair!”

The General couldn’t contain his laughter any longer. “Follow me to our bunker, a lot safer there...Robotian reinforcements usually arrive by now with fresh ammo and you could end up with some nasty wounds. You’re gonna love this one Yucatan! Oh gawd, you’re gonna love it I promise!” He  exploded in a gale force wind of laughter as we followed the Hound Dog  to safe harbor amid the smoke and grime and the rubble. I couldn’t help but notice the pale worried looks on both Poontang and Strangeloves faces. Everyone seemed to know what was going on except me. I felt as though I was in that dream … the one where you enter the room and everyone is dressed in formal wear and you’re buck naked. Now I could also claim that along with be bucked..I was being fucked.. by experts. Chapter 22 - Ethel Merman Fishnet Cyborgs

 

 

We followed the Hipster rebels to Red Zeppelin headquarters, or a reasonable facsimile of a military compound if your army consisted of The Three Stooges in a Tim Burton film. Sweaty pipes overhead leaked hot water giving the impression you were entering a incontinent rainforest or Seattle in the wet season, which is pretty much 13 months out of 12 every year. A real bakers dozen.  


“Nice place ya got here,” Poontang said with a smirk in her voice. “You always were a snarky bitch,” the General replied. “Sit. Coffee?” We all shook our heads. “No coffee, but if you have Toklas Brownies around here,” I blurted out. “I could use a  buzz about now.” The General  snapped his greasy fingers and his whacked out toady brought out a tray of some of the best buzz brownies a mechanical planet could offer.  

As we got buzz bombed, the General got down to biz buzzed. “My men can get you safely to the Rabbit Hole. We can’t go any further. Too dangerous,” he explained. “Once there you’re on your own, but you won’t have any trouble, as I’m sure Poontang can get you in and out without any problem.” Who the hell were these Rabbit Hole Amazons anyway, and more importantly how do they know Poontang?

Soon the Toklas infusion hit me full force and  I was  as comfortably numb as a coma patient in Bellevue awaiting transfer to a cuckoo’s nest. The General leaned his khaki camo bulk forward, obviously to be emphatic. “I do however, have one condition. Unless you agree  to it, then we do not have a  deal!” We had no choice so we bit the bullet. “You will get the Falcon off the planet and away from the Tohos. If they regain it they will be a formidable foe and squash the revolt. We can handle them now and we will fight the Rabbit and her gang on even ground in our little civil war, but, should the Tohos regain their former power the revolution as a whole  is at an end.”

“Agreed,” I grumbled.  He didn’t know we already had plans to exchange the Falcon for Poontangs sister anyway and that meant the Narco Marx factor. Who knows what he thought we were going to with it being the simple single minded revolutionary that he is.


“Good. Then we can begin. I’ll tell you what you are up against Mr. Yucatan in case you weren’t fully filled in. The Rabbit Hole Rebels are dangerous, but first you have to get past the Ethel Merman Cyborgs  and Bob Fosse Fishnets here in the Vortex!” We control this vector, the Rabbits control the Rabbit Hole, but these two groups are relatively new to us. We’ll eventually wipe them but for now a mere annoyance.  Great, more pretenders to the throne of this shithole Vortex.

Strangelove motioned for us to get moving, so we exchanged our good speed wishes and lucks and made a hasty exit from Red Zep headquarters with his men running interference for us in the streets where the battle was still raging. The stench of the vaped body count added to the musty smell of the standing water and dead space rats mingling in the grey fog of death and the smoking haze from the crashing rubble breaking up outside from the pitched battle between the Red Zeps on the ground and the surrounding allied forces of Tohos and Com-Reds.


The sky was filled with  magnificent armed flying drones...death from above raining down on the Vortex. I knew the Tohos and Comreds wanted us too, but strangely enough I had the feeling they were clear cutting a path filled with dead Zeps so we could reach our destination and in the bargain bring back to Falcon within their collective reach.

A reality check reminded me...they both wanted the Falcon  and were strange allied bedfellows now, but I had an uneasy feeling that once we had the Falcon in our possession they would turn their attention to our ultimate demise before concentrating on eliminating each other. Meanwhile at the end of this deadly rainbow Narco Marx already held the trump card, having dealt himself into  game early for his grab at the pot of gold. In all likelihood be the last man standing.


The lasers and phasers were heating up the grey dark of the night, maybe it was dusk, you couldn’t tell the difference between the grey ash and smoke of battle, a nuclear winter effect that would cut off photosynthesis in any case for struggling flora reaching out for a drink of sunshine. Even our clothes became covered in dust...in every direction it was grey, black and faded dirty white. Pleasantville where grey card tones fought  a box of Crayola’s. Even the M & M’s were black and white and all the jelly beans are masses of melted colorless gel with islands of sweet sugar  that attract the holy roamin’ empire of rodents  claiming the black back alley’s and stench filled sewers shooting steam through vents creating islands of global warming for the hopeless homeless winos and junkies to ward off hypodermic hypothermia hypothetically.

Poontang stopped fast, alarmed. “Look. We’ve got trouble,” she whispered. As my eyes focused through the gauze of grey I had to agree. The streets were alive with the sound of music. As I listened intently I recognized the songs...BROADWAY SHOW TUNES being sung by two opposing female gangs carrying chains, knives, guns, all old school and all with a look of PMS murder in their eyes.

I could tell by the look on her face it was just about showtime. “OK Doc now we have a fight on our hands. Those are the Ethel Mermans, and the Bob Fosse Fishnets. What the General forgot to tell you is  one group, the Merman’s, are escaped human female and male pre-op  slaves from Retropolis who were  kidnapped and destined for Robotian bordellos after conversion into Erotibot cyborgs … the others are full fledged Toho Female Erotibot Warriors the Toho’s sent in to recapture the Mermans. They’ve been fighting to stalemate for two years now. Both are  tough in tights and we have to get through them to get to the Rabbit Hole.”

Terrific. I hoped to hell, PMS did not effect deranged Erotibots. I was stuck in the urban battleground of two gangs - real Sharks and Jets shit set amidst