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

of London.  Poontang started to cry and Deco bid her adieu for her own good and  escaped to Barbarella, a neutral zone to obtain papers to exit the space station as the Com-Red bloodhounds were hot on his trail. Arrest meant certain death, and Deco needed a cover story to  bide his time until papers could be in hand,  so he bought a rundown piano bar called the Fellatio Alger and retained the  rundown 2nd gen cyborg piano player named Sam who plays "As Time Goes By" ad nauseum at Deco’s request as it had been his and Poontangs favorite song. In time,  as time  went by, he couldn’t stand it anymore. The memories were too painful, so Sam was told not to tickle the ivories with the tune anymore.

Poontang and I had no inkling we had entered the world of Art Deco by walking into the Fellatio for a few drinks to unwind after our flight.  She went up to the cyborg pianist and requested “As Time Goes By” and Sam the Cyborg, not having had the song deleted from his circuit board complied.  Why didn’t Deco delete it from his playlist? Simply because no one in the 26 Cent would ever request that forgotten moldy oldie. As Sam began to work the 88’s, the song filled the room making it’s way to the office  of Deco as he was  working on a booze order in the back. Storming out in a rage he went up to chastise Sam.  "I thought I told you never to play that song? I’m sick of it! Don’t you know any Jerry Lee Lewis tunes for Christs sake!" It was then, that Deco’s pale grey as steel eyes  noticed Poontangs big round browns with a deer in the headlight gaze. He is stunned, offers apologizes and says, “Play it again Cyborg!”

Poontang was wanted by Com-Red Intell now, most wanted list it turns out, and had to leave Retropolis faster than a speeding bullet.  That’s when she walked into my life. Now Art Deco walked back into hers

Almost immediately the embers in Poontangs heart sparked into furious flame. I could tell by the inviting estos scent emitting from between her legs she was being consumed  by the passion of a potent love potion from the past. You know the type, those pesky political passions that mix with the emotion of love that Deco had ignited not too many years before. Makes for an awkward, yet interesting physiological ménage a trois, non?

I invited Deco to join us. He was cordial and smooth as a lounge lizards gold lame pants. Later that night, while  visiting with the us and oozing charm with the impact of an avalanche in Switzerland, Deco let the booze do his talking and  had one of those reflective Frank Sinatra 3 o'clock in the wee smalls moment with a drink and a cigarette...pained at seeing Poontang again..."Of all the bars and gin joints in the world, why did you have to walk into mine?"

Along with us in the bar were a group of Com-Red officers taking in the sex and drug joys of the neutral zone,  who were also in their cups. The Com-Reds break into a guttural patriotic singing of “Back in the USSR”  while the Deco Freedom Fighters at the bar, including Deco and Poontang  counter with “Smoke on the Water”.

I finally  had enough of Mr. Suave and realizing I didn’t stand a chance in Gary, Indiana Hell of getting any poontang from Poontang, excused myself early and went upstairs alone. I had the desk clerk send up an Eroti-Bot and had room service bring up a bottle of Soma and  a side order of  Tranqs.  Pleasure before business I always say….and finally  drifted off to sleep after I was spent. I set the Bot to auto pilot after we  had mechani-sex and it quietly masturbated as I listened to an ongoing lullabye of mechanical orgasms.

Then...the dawn….We had a long way to go yet in our quest, so imagine my surprise when I was rudely awakened earlier than planned by a knock at the door of our adjoining rooms. “Who the hell can this be at this goddamned hour of hell?”


I grabbed my cold alloy Link Wray and cocked the trigger ready for anything. Half asleep I opened the door. It was a young kid, the same desk clerk dressed in black I encountered when we checked in.  He had a look of panic and agitation permanently etched into his face more graphic than Mt. Rushmore. “Are you Doc Yucatan?” he asked timidly. “Yeah, waddaya got?” He answered shakily, “The police are in the lobby and want to talk to you ..quick!” Confusion, panic, adrenalin...all emotions were colliding in me at once...what had I done...what did they want with me. This is a neutral zone after all. Maybe it was Poontang they were after..guilt by association. Only one way to find out. Face the music and do the dance…

Chapter 11 - Murder & Space Monkeys

Head pounding from Tranqs, eyes red from Soma I lumbered half drunk,  hungover blind to the lobby to see what the police wanted with me. Can’t be too serious as they sent a scrawny bellboy with a bad complexion to roust me before my first drink and not a SWAT team of fast food workers with paper hats demanding my head or a raise in the minimum space wage. They were waiting for me and I wasn’t ready for them yet.


“Ah, Mr. Yucatan. We appreciate your kind cooperation. Thank you for coming down.” The words were too gushy for my unsophisticated tastes, but I felt cocky enough  to offer an acknowledging grunt “What can I do for you...uh..let’s see by your insignia you are a Captain, yes?” His shoes gave him away too. Not worn like a working stiff who pounds a beat. Probably the ass on his Elvis Presley gold lame pants was shiny from sitting on it all day delegating the real work to mindless cyborg subordinates.

“We have a murder on our hands,  it’s not unusual in itself here, but this case is unique.It seems according to our  witnesses it was committed by a female Retropolin. Your kind so to speak, human. Your reputation as the best in your business on your planet we thought you might be so kind as to give us a hand with the investigation.”

The perp   was a female from Retropolis.  I recoiled, startled as I recognized who she was by her description..Dorothy Lahore. She had a rap sheet and a rep back home as a tough case and had four arrests under her belt for murder, two for littering and one for duplicating old Tom Jones 8-Track tapes to holo-disc format and reselling them for profit. Jones is regarded as a god in my century much as Jerry Lewis was in France in the 20th. Jones Mania was never ending!

Dorothy was shrewd ….not one goddamned conviction. The answer to why was simple. She was screwing every judge in town.  Smart girl. Justice may be blind, but it’s also horny.  She was arrested again recently for murdering a lawyer. Not too serious but she was moving up the scale, and the judge she was to go before was a hermaphrodite so he didn’t need Dorothy to get his moon rocks off...he could do himself, usually under his robe while sitting on the bench hearing a case. Dorothy knew she faced serious prison time this time so when she pulled some strings and  was released on bail, she bailed!

Dorothy left Retropolis in a stolen pod, for the neutral sector of Barbarella to look for work as an assassin with the Wicked Butch of the West  of Barbarellas Brighton Beach waterfront district. That fell through and there was an attempt instead to enlist Dorothy into a life of prostitution and hypodermic needles. “First it was the Catholic nuns, then a priest, a cross-eyed altar boy and now this shit” Dorothy screamed! She also snapped!

It was ten that all hell broke lose. Witnesses say Dorothy pulled a Ruger ,44 mag auto pistol from her garter and pumped six rounds into the Westie Butch screaming, “MAKE MY DAY BUTCH!” Munchkins dove for cover, many reporting they heard three shots  fired from the Yellow Brick Road Sassy Knoll.  Dorothy also swiped the pair of ruby red pumps Butch was wearing as a kill trophy.  The ruby red pumps belonged to a David Bowie collection, but that is a spider from Mars of a different color.

After the gunsmoke cleared Dorothy was as dazed and confused as a Led Zeppelin song and kept calling for her mob contact “Auntie Em, Auntie Em” when out of the clear blue a rather fetching witch known as Cabaret Dietrich, a real manly Marlene who was the dead Butch’s sister emerged. She was simply smashing with a fabulous fedora  and an unappeased appetite for marijuana smoking hot farm girls. Ding dong the Butch was  dead,  and Dietrich wondered what kind of a whack job would kill with a gun and not a black and white farmhouse! It was time for revenge and Dorothy was told by Dietrich she had to get out of Dodge by sundown and more importantly, to return the ruby red pumps she had robbed the corpse of.

Visibly shaken now,  Dorothy leaves and walks outside onto the street. The neighborhood weirdos target her immediately, including three escaped convicts from Neptune who were on the lam. A heartless traumatized tin man;, a salacious brain dead straw man on medication and a libidinous lion with lustful leanings...all with cavorting carnal desires and misdirected sexual intentions to “do” training bra Dorothy who was doing it right after she  started having her periods, or as she said in later interviews, “I went from tampons to tornadoes overnight, then I met these three cheese omelette weirdos. Disgusting, rusting and dusty. Foul mouthed midgets and hot to trot horny hags. It was like being back in Catholic school with everyone trying to get a peek up my skirt to see if gingham has a G-spot.”

Tin Man who confronts her first confessing that he is  the William Burroughs Steely Dan Dildo and by the simple act of squirting a little lubrication to him and to her, in appropriate places, they can be off, running and cumming to the races down that quarter mile estros fueled Yellow Brick Road dragstrip for that wonderful wiz jizz that was jazz.


The three now take Dorothy by the hand to a seedy back alley bar to meet some friends, two more losers, you know the kind that still haven’t scored at the mall by closing time. The dive was loud and brassy and sassy.“I guess I’m not in Retropolis anymore!” she screamed orgasmically. “Seems more like a jumpin’ jive juke joint on Planet  Harlem on a Saturday night…” She took in the whole scene, including sizing up her three new companions. Dig the scarecrow, she thought,  with the day-glo jacket and velvet hat now sitting away in the corner blasting powder up his nose with that  lion doing Lenny Bruce imitations while finger poppin’ beatnik midgets are flying higher than Judy Garland with an arm full of junkie