Lars versus Space Aliens
by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
Part 2: Plotting Vengeance
Lars drove out of sight. When he didn’t see anyone following him, he slowed down and checked who’d alerted those aliens by calling him. He wanted to have words with that person.
It was from that woman again, Ditte. Just asking where he was. Lars got angry. Had that poxy woman not gotten it clearly when he straight up told her the first time that she was calling the wrong number? And had she not realized when he’d not replied to her following missives? Clearly not. So he figured he’d flood her with a storm of expletives, all the ones he knew as well as new ones he’d just invented for the occasion.
Lars fumbled with the phone, trying to drive as he did this. And he dialled...
Thing is, that a week earlier, he had got a wrong number call from someone entirely different...
* * *
James T. Leroy was a man in his mid-forties. Not quite medium height but medium build. A slightly large head, with some prominent features. He was currently in his basement, dressed as Swiss Miss, engaged in whipping a naked woman who was dangling from the ceiling in a chain, while a midget in a gimp-suit played an accordion and danced nearby.
And then the phone rang.
James stopped whipping the woman, and checked his phone. “Who is this?”
“This is Lars, I want you [expletive deleted] to stop [expletive deleted] calling me! [expletive deleted]”
“I have never called you!”
“Who is that?” asked the naked woman.
“Some Lars.”
“Who are you talking to? Is that Ditte?” asked Lars.
“Ditte?”
“Tell her that she’s an [expletive deleted]!”
“Who are you to call my home and disrespect my woman?”
“I am Lars! Stop bothering me [several expletives deleted] or I will bring you pain!” Lars hung up.
James stood there a moment looking perplexed at the phone.
“Are you finished with that?” asked the woman, annoyed.
He looked at her. “Come on, hit me. I want to bleed some more!”
“Do you know Lars?”
“Never heard of him. Now hit me. I have unscarred areas yet.”
James shrugged and hit her.
* * *
Lars was quite angry now. Things were too much for him: aliens, an idiot woman wanting him to show up at her party, some guy pretending not to know this woman.
Lars hatched a bulletproof plan of vengeance: he would show up at that woman’s birthday party, and he would give her son something. But what?
The car was running low on fuel. Lars guessed it had something to do with that door sticking out, creating drag. Now where was the fuel door on that thing? Lars pulled the handle to open it, and checked the rear view. On the right side, he guessed, since he couldn’t see it from the sideview.
Five minutes later, he came by a fuel station nestled in a clearing. He came in fast and close, hitting the pumps with the door. The door came off, and Lars could align the car with the pump. He pumped in a few liters of diesel. No reason to fill this wreck up, but better to have enough to get into the city.
He walked into the store to pay for the fuel. He also needed to relieve himself; the beer seemed to have filtered through his kidneys and wanted out. Thirdly, he needed some crappy excuse gift for that kid. Maybe an air freshener or a bottle of tar-remover?
“Did you hear a crash just now?” asked the clerk as he went to pay for the fuel.
“No, what sort of crash?”
“I don’t know. Thunder, maybe.”
Lars shook his head. He got the change and a receipt, then went to look for the toilets. They were usually somewhere in the back. Then he noticed the magazine rack: it had all the usual car and caravan magazines. And something he figured would make a great gift for that boy: porn.
Lars picked one up and looked at it. It had been there a while, people had already leafed through it. Then he checked the date. He got annoyed and called the clerk: “Hey, you! Do you realize your porn magazines are old?”
“What?” asked the clerk with amazement and disbelief, at Lars, not what he was saying.
“This one is dated 2004!”
“It’s porn. It has no sell-by date.”
“That is no excuse! You should be selling space-age porn!
“Since the advent of the Internet,” the clerk patiently explained, ”people have been moving their porn habit away from printed material and onto their PCs.”
“Since the advent of the Internet... Who talks like that?” said Lars, now more annoyed than ever.
“You asked.”
“I wasn’t expecting such a trite, hackneyed answer!”
“Who are you calling hackneyed! You’re hackneyed!”
“What! You’re being insolent with me, you delinquent! I will show you! I shall piss on your ancient pornographic magazines!”
“What are you doing!”
“I already told you!”
The clerk stared in disbelief and horror as Lars started to urinate onto the pornographic magazines. “Agh!” he stammered, twice, before he sprung into action, running around the desk, and accosting Lars.
“Unhand me, villain!”
“Stop pissing in my shop!”
“I piss as I please!”
“You can’t do this in here!”
“I’m already doing it!”
“Leave now! I’m calling the police! Citizen’s arrest!” With that, the clerk threw Lars out of the store, and set to work cleaning it.
Lars stood outside, half-furious, half-ashamed. Part of him wanted to go back in and wreak some more havoc, perhaps beat up the clerk, the rest of him knew he was behaving like a blithering idiot and he should go home and hide for a few weeks.
He zipped up his pants and wiped his hands off on his shirt. He had managed to stuff a magazine into his back pocket; at least he had that. It was very explicit. Exactly what one should bring to a ten-year old’s birthday party.
He walked back to the car and, as he was starting it up, he saw in the rear view mirror a rounded-off old people’s SUV and a pickup truck come thundering down the road toward him, all full of beetles from space. With lasers. And he knew they had spotted him, for they were agitated and pointing at him.
A laser struck the A-pillar right next to Lars, startling him. Sparks flew everywhere. Lars looked: it had melted through, and was glowing. He started the car, put it in gear and stepped on the gas. Would have been real impressive, too, if he hadn’t been driving a diesel. The cloud of black and blue smoke was kinda awesome though.
The aliens found the gas station to be an excellent target. They lasered it and the pumps. The pumps caught fire. Then they shot some blue fireballs at both the shop and the pumps, causing the entire thing to erupt into a wall of fire that engulfed them.
Lars saw this in the rear view, and breathed lighter, sure he was rid of them. But they emerged out of the flames, wheels on fire and a bit singed themselves, but alive. They emphasized their being alive by shooting some lasers at him. Some hit the car, and Lars could smell the burning seats. He could hear the car begin to rattle, felt it wobble and wondered what it was. He hit a bump, and the rear hatch fell off. That attracted his attention to the D-pillars. The aliens had lasered them through, just for fun.
He reached out and yelled at them, “Stop shooting at me! I have to go to a birthday party!”
He figured to shoot back at them and reached for the gun he had stolen earlier. It was in the passenger seat. While doing that, he hit a bicyclist, running him off the road. He shrugged. He quickly aimed the gun and took a shot. He hit another bicyclist who was next to the pickup full of aliens. He or she exploded into a massive fireball, causing the aliens to swerve a little.
Lars straightened the car, which was running off the road, and tried again. He was interrupted by sparks from a laser hitting the C-pillar on the passenger’s side. He ran off the road, over a traffic sign, then a small tree, and finally a bicyclist who had stopped to look at what was going on behind him. The cyclist was flung into the woods and lost forever. As far as we know anyway.
Lars straightened the car again and ignored the lasers. He took a deep breath as they fried the passenger seats, and the rearview mirror and the remaining roof-pillars. And the roof came off.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” he said to himself, looking up. Then he reached back and fired a couple of shots.
One fireball exploded in the middle of the road. The other hit the meatball-shaped SUV, blowing it up like a firework in a bucket of gasoline. Lars could hear the other vehicle collide with it.
He smiled and continued driving. He was pretty sure he’d need to replace the car. It was getting a bit floppy.
Copyright © 2017 by Ásgrímur Hartmannsson
