The Cosmic Slug

by Chris Chapman

Part 1 appears
in this issue.

conclusion

“It’s a slug,” answered Koenig rolling his eyes. “Blown into a world threat by that idiot there.” He pointed at Hastings who happened to be sniffing his own armpits. “Gardeners of the Earth, beware. Everyone else — who gives a damn?”

“But it’s a cosmic slug,” said Corporal Jacobs.

“Then don’t grow cosmic cabbage,” answered Koenig, crossing his arms and shrugging. The students behind did the exact same. One of them poked his tongue out at Jacobs.

“So at 9:55,” Jacobs turned his attention back to Hastings, “me and Rutherford saw him thumb wrestle a goose. And geese don’t even have thumbs, Sir.”

“What? None of them have thumbs?” Queried Hastings. He waggled his own thumbs in front of his face eying them suspiciously. Then, once satisfied that they had been firmly in place all morning, he arched an eyebrow and asked, “Have we checked them all?”

“Maybe we should focus more on the matter in hand.”

“Good thinking, Corporal,” replied Hastings as he folded up the flyer and slipped it inside his jacket. “So is there any chance that he can break free from the structure?”

“Rope’s two inches thick in diameter, Sir,” replied Jacobs. “Me and Rutherford knocked up the gallows, as sturdy as the British Empire, Sir.”

“Good man. If it’s your work Jacobs, I’m sure we’ve nothing to worry about.”

“Although you still don’t trust me enough to re-grout your bathroom,” muttered Jacobs, twisting the toe of his right boot in the dirt.

“Not really the time, soldier,” whispered back Commander Hastings. “Not in front of the geeks.”

“Oh it’s never the time with you. Last time I asked, you said you were too busy arranging your screws in size order. Size ord...”

The distant crowd of soldiers screeched and scattered. Hastings, Jacobs and Koenig stared at each other and then at the jerky figure of Ludlow Bangs.

“Can either of you students tell me exactly what is going on?” asked Doctor Koenig in his haughty teaching tone.

“Ludlow Bangs is coming towards us,” said one of the students scratching the side of his head with a pencil.

“Try again.”

“Ludlow Bangs is suddenly getting fatter,” said the other student, his braces enabling his spittle to cascade out and cover a full one hundred and eight degree radius.

“In a manner, in a manner,” replied Doctor Koenig. As the whole sentence dribbled from his tongue the tone became more and more manic. “But what we are actually witnessing is Ludlow Bangs expanding. Mister Bangs is expanding at such a rapid pace that within a minute we will be engulfed by his bulk and smothered by his engorged frame”

“I’m not liking the sound of that,” said Corporal Jacobs. He began to back away, leaving the simian-esque frame of Commander Hasting staring at the scene in bemusement. But Jacobs only managed to back into the crouching form of Doctor Koenig who, along with his two students, had formed a circle, the three of them holding their lab coats above their heads creating a makeshift igloo.

“No room in here,” cried out Koenig as Jacob’s heel connected with a flap of fabric. His voice was tinged with madness. “Go find your own shelter.” Whimpering could be heard from inside.

“It’s time for action, Corporal.” Hastings beckoned to Jacobs with his finger. He took a deep breath, his barrel chest dwarfing his tiny legs. “It’s time to show just exactly why I earned my position in this army, why I deserve to wear these medals.” As he spoke he tapped his forefinger on a metal trinket pinned to his jacket.

“That one was for sending off fifty ‘Fizzbo’ bottle tops, Sir.”

“Wel,l that one,” said Hastings, moving along and highlighting a silver flower with a brown and orange ribbon.

“Your plucky performance of Goro the Matchmaker in last year’s rendition of Madam Butterfly.”

“Well this Purple Heart of bravery,” growled Hastings, tearing the medal from his breast and jabbing it into Corporal Jacob’s eye, “what do you think I got that for, huh?”

“I think you stole it from Major Dawkins. If you look close, it even has his initials carved into the...”

Hastings snatched the medal back, attached it to his uniform and then, having thought twice about it, he removed it and slipped the shiny disc into his pocket.

“The point being, it takes a very brave man to steal from a brave man, and I deserved it more than he did. He was only ever an ‘orders man.’ Look, never mind all that. Do you have anything sharp on you?”

Before them Ludlow Bangs had swollen to such a degree that half of the Army base courtyard now looked like it was a meat-sack dirigible. Moments ago, one of his shoes, no longer able to take the strain of casing the chubby foot that bloated inside, shot off and shattered a nearby window.

“Got this Stanley knife, Sir,” replied Jacobs fiddling with tool belt.

“It’ll have to do,” said Hastings snatching the blade from the Corporal’s hand. “Now you might think I know nothing about bravery, but you know I know a thing or two about pop bottles. And the thing about pop bottles is once they’re all shook up and ready to blow like this big bloated body is, at that point there’s always some point of release easiest to pry open. On pop bottles of course it’s always the bottle top. On an inflating fat bastard like this, I’m guessing the head.”

Corporal Jacobs winced at the thought.

“Or maybe we could just cut the rope and let him float off, Sir?”

Commander Hastings almost spat out his tongue with indignation at the mere suggestion.

“Soldier, this man is a heinous criminal,” he began pacing back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. “You want to see the kind of sissy up for that sort of thinking you take a good look at this.” He turned and pointed at the scientist igloo, which now seemed to have its own mote of urine. “This horrible killer has done things against this country, things that I just happen to forget what they are right now, but they must have been bad you know, hence the hanging and all.”

“Sir, Ludlow Bangs was a hero,”

“Yes, that was one of them, heinous crimes like that. Anyway do you know how many times in my career I’ve had the opportunity to legally behead the enemy?”

Jacobs shrugged.

“I don’t know, seven?”

In reply Hastings clicked up the blade on the Stanley knife.

“And here’s number eight,” and he placed the blade between his teeth and ran off towards the growing mound of flesh.

Viewed from a distance, the two of them looked like a pair of fleas rounding the under belly of a prime porker. Clasping onto handfuls of blubber — (‘ohhhhh, feels oddly like Vaseline in a balloon,’ commented Corporal Jacobs as the skin oozed between the gaps of his clenched fist) — they shimmied along the extremities of a thigh. Avoiding the crotch, they walked up the belly rolls of flab as though they were steps and managed to climb the chest and shoulder regions by using a rogue strand of clothing as a guide rope.

At the top they held hands to steady themselves and slowly crept towards the centre of the throbbing meat heap. The head, circled by a noose, was a quivering red globe. It was a veined crimson orb pissing sweat and steam.

“Crikes, we don’t have time for the knife Corporal. It’s going to blow and it’ll take you and me with it. Do you have anything a bit more heavy duty?”

“Got this claw hammer, Sir.”

Hastings grumbled.

“Does the notion of an actual ‘weapon’ mean nothing to you man? Look, never mind. Just give, give.”

Hastings snatched the hammer, steadied himself in the flesh-bed of blubber, and ran. He ran as best as he could and as fast as he could whilst swinging the hammer like a rotor blade on a helicopter. He connected flush with the forehead. It sounded like a giant tearing his trousers. The head spun off into the sky and from the hole a gust of wind blew Hastings off his feet. Corporal Jacobs helped him back up. Sailing away in the distance, they could just about make out the head of Ludlow Bangs. They could just about make out the strange thing that happened next to it. A flap of skin unfurled from the neck rent of the escaping head. The rag of flesh inflated like air being blown into a rubber glove, after which the flying form of Ludlow Bangs stood to attention and saluted the Commander and Corporal as it disappeared over the horizon. Jacobs looked at his watched, it read 10:55.

“God bless that man,” said Hastings standing proud and returning the salute.

“Moments ago Sir...”

“Soldier,” butted in Hastings, “moments ago, that man was a criminal and, yes, now he is a hero again. You know what I think about all this?”

“Sir?”

“I think that crazy flying bastard was testing us, Corporal.”

“Testing, Sir?”

Commander Hastings placed his arm around the Corporal’s shoulder,

“That’s right, Corporal, testing us. And I think in many ways we passed. In many, many ways we kicked arse, Corporal.”

Air from the neck hole of the vast pink torso blasted upwards, jiggling Hasting’s face and giving him the expression of a bulldog hanging out of a car window. “But in other ways, honest ways, if you will, we failed. We let a criminal escape and therefore face a court-martial.”

Hastings paused for thought and sucked on his teeth. “These latter ways I’m really not so keen on. Not keen on at all, soldier. That’s why I decided we’ll tell them we smashed off his head and he died, and thus we put an end to that terrible, terrible universal threat.”

He let out a chuckle and waved his hands in the air. “I mean, it’s not like they can say they can’t find a body, right?” Hastings slapped Jacobs on the back, “right?”

Crouching forward from the blow and trying to stop his eyes from watering, the Corporal managed to croak out a “No, Sir.”

“Damn straight soldier. We’re the heroes now,” said Hastings with the emphasis on the word ‘we’re.’ “And what you just said was pure hero talk. The kind of hero talk that gets bathrooms re-grouted.”

“Really Sir?”

Once more, the Corporal’s eyed began to well up with tears. “Sure, sure, just not after seven. That’s when I listen to my panpipe moods collection. Now how are we supposed to get down from this thing? Do we just wait until it deflates?”

What looked like a bouncy castle version of a diseased kidney slowly collapsed in on itself as the air gushed out. Commander Hastings lay down, hands behind his head, staring up at the clouds.

“Well what about the cosmic slug, Sir?” asked Corporal Jacobs, sitting beside his superior.

“The what?”

“Slug, Sir, cosmic slug, the cause of this whole fiasco.”

“Oh right, yeah. Well that’s a science thing, isn’t it? Yeah, a science thing. Doctor Conehead can deal with that. Him and his white crested sodium whiffs can siphon through this sack of crap to see if it’s still wriggling. I’m off to the canteen. You coming Corporal?”

“Nah,” Jacobs pointed to the window broken by Bangs’ missile shoe. “If I leave it like that it’ll just go on bugging me. Have to pop off base and get some putty first, mind.”

“You do what you got to do, soldier,” replied Commander Hastings patting his belly. “I’m off for some beef bourguignon. It comes highly recommended.”