The lights that hadn’t yet blown out flashed cheaply. A hulking prison warden bulged with a body composed of thick muscles under a prison uniform with raggedly cut off sleeves and a name tag reading "Simon.” He had only one arm free and the giant struggled to finesse open the little lock on an iron gate entrance. His other arm was busy holding on to the thing slung over it. A broken crystal mutated man dressed in a straitjacket over black and white striped standard prisoner garb. He would have more than enough company in the mines they were headed for.
Edward found himself held in the vice grip of the law as he struggled to breath. He was already practically comatose due to being only out of open heart surgery for 72 hours. He had few remaining long hairs moping down hallway after hallway while he was hauled by his feet. The walls were bald where everything looked identical inside the labyrinth of a facility under Killin Manor.
The warden knew exactly where to go with each step of his colossal feet quaking underneath them both.
"Phew those feet stink," said Simon, loudly snorting as he adjusted the cargo for a better grip while his stomach grumbled like a grizzly. "That reminds me I'm hungry” he finished, diverting course with sudden impulse.
“Hey you mindless savage, we gotta schedule to keep here remember we are being tracked by the big boss!” scolded the high heeled lady with a whipping shrill that resembled an old bell in a school cafeteria.
The rumbling stomach whaling hunger pains overshot her authority. Simon danced forward in a lumbering trance, with bloodshot eyes twitching for a fix of nutrients. His massive chest was muscled out to the maximum with veins popping out, and his entire body glistened with sweat. He must have been juiced to the gills, and severely addicted to something strong that was wearing thin. A green trail of intoxicating scent led his nose on strings. He burst into the next room bypassing the key-card by brute force.
“Mmmm” Simon said, drooling on Edward’s head who had already gotten moist from the sweet.
Edward gagged involuntarily, but his stomach was empty. The funky scent carried them into a kitchen that was a mess. The chopping block was covered in maggots, sour bones, and the cleaver was rustier than a neglected bridge. The fridge was open, and everything was spoiled inside. The table was overturned with the stock family portraits smashed.
Simon ignored this gruesome scene to head to a particularly spooky looking corner. There was a vintage vending machine lit up in the darkness all of sudden. It engulfed them with flashing while a catchy jingle was sung with talent. Then a circular thing started blinding him from the neon screen lit with a cartoon of some sort of contraption flying out of the atmosphere and rocketing towards space.
Edward closed his eyes while he hung in place from his feet. The sound of change jingling began to tear into his eardrums.
“Clink, clunk, clink.”
The coin slot sound repeated being filled until impatient slamming of the desired selection of product interrupted. Now loud gears rotated into commotion sending an aluminum can tumbling out the chute like Jack, and Jill.
“Let it rip!” Simon cried, picking up the drink.
“Clssssssooooonk,” cried the air escaping as the brute ignored the pull tab.
He ripped open off the entire lid and started chugging. The gurgling stomach sounds only increased as the acids mixed with who knows what artificial chemicals. The name of the drink was numbskull_deathmetal, and the heavy liquid was sorta golden colored. The can size was XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXL!
Simon chugged the concoction to completion and his brain was sent into maximum overkill. He raged at nothing before ripping out a toaster then toppled the fridge and crushed it underfoot. One of his diseased hands grabbed hold of the giant cleaver from the cutting board. He raised the blade, and went to strike. Edward tried to retract his head inside the straitjacket like a turtle, but was unsuccessful. The cleaver spun through the air with a hiss.
"Smack!"
It hit a target in the next room.
“Aaaaaahhaha, look at that bullseye,'' Simon said, beating his pulsing chest like an ape, and feeling extra manly again.
Simon paced the place finally feeling right again before eventually tweaking into another room. There Edward spotted the cleaver landed dead on the center of a dusty dart board. The shag pile carpet began to smoke while Simon zoomed back and forth. The liquid slowly flooded his brain until he shook in celebration. Simon's face looked punch drunk, while he strutted forward with utter confidence.
An hour horn burst into the room shaking it. A whip cracked the air finally calming down the giant by stunning him.
“Playtime over boys. It's jail time now!” scolded the piercing voice towering overhead.
The lady’s heels had extended in the blink of an eye making stilts sharpened like switchblades. Her hair was red, lab coat spotless, and well worn jeans wrapped around thick thighs built like a junkyard crusher. She cradled an electric whip that sparked with a menacing hum looking super pissed off. .
“Crack!”
The sparks flew out on extension that formed fake hearts circling above Edward’s eyes. He was shocked into feeling normal as the freshly implanted heart of dubious quality kicked into proper gear again with the electric charge.
“Grrrr,” he growled like an animal in love.
“Alright it's ok I got my thirst quenched for now, because the prisoner is weighing me down,” said Simon.
“Let’s go slowpoke” barked the Lady like a chihuahua at them.
Edward tried howling back at her like a wolf but due to his restraints it came out sounding like a muzzled dog. She cranked the electro device into turbo pile-driver mode and flicked the whip back. She cracked him comatose off the giants back and onto the floor.
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Simon retrieved the brain damaged madman and headed out the door. Edward’s ears were ringing with reverberating tinnitus caused by a career as a musician. Her weaponized electromagnetic shrieks weren't helping his head pounding from the surge of impacting gigawatts. The electricity surges through his reinforced crystal scaled body before kick starting his heart and rebooting his consciousness. Edward wasn’t even on this planet anymore. He was a far out man.
"Time to focus" Simon grunted, hunting for something new in his pocket.
A gizmo pulled out a quarter the size of the man dangling near it. It was probably a tool of brutal torture, but being branded of the royal gossip rag was the raging clue that it was a scam. Simon activated a trigger, and a miniature robot dick unfolded. He vaped that shit straight into his lungs and blew the smog into the hallway like a smoke machine. The crystal light fixed to his miner helmet lit the filth coated walls while he hummed with pleasure.
The first inmates they ran into tended toothbrushes scrubbing while more dressed in rags used the same materials to clean machinery. The color of their stained orange prison garbs matched the long hair of the Lady who continued prowling behind them like a cougar.
Simon was shaking more, and more under the spell of the witch’s experimental energy brew. His body jolted out of control, and boogied down a staircase. This area was the sketchiest place yet. The red hue from the emergency lights penetrated the dead dreary air. The prison party continued down the tricky path to navigate brick steps until eleven short floors later they reached what appeared to be the bottom.
It was a trash room, and fenced from an alley exit. A set of three dumpsters had mostly finished decomposing the compost, and the floor was a puddle of mud. Simon struggled to wrangle the tiny key into unlocking the path. Lady jumped through the air and snatched it to save time.
They walked forward again through an underground prison yard followed by a hot spotlight being trained on them. The dusty maroon carpeting looked like it had been dyed in many workplace accidents.
A little further on the miners worked pickaxes on blocks, while their feet were shackled together. The prisoners covered in soot worked away while those too far gone with various stages of crystal mutations loitered around in chains waiting to die from overexposure. The mining carts functioned automatically on rails crunching away any debris. Air quality was terrible inside the dangerously thick haze of black lung. Edward coughed a fit, rocking him even deeper into submission.
“Let's get this over with and get back upstairs for the reward,” said Simon, speed walking past a set of industrial conveyor belts hauling multicolored rocks to the surface.
The walls were covered in a slick of dirty oil, and the entrance to the next area was marked cell block #69. There was a menacing looking slyman on duty holding a bully club outside the incoming stall of the showers. A skinny little old man held a valve and a pot bellied man dressed for executions held the fire hose.
“Thud!”
Edward’s noggin smashed a filthy toilet in a dead ended square bathroom. A pool of bloody water was in the center with a limp corpse face down in the center for company. He was wide awake by the ice cold brown sludge pooling on the floor. He felt the metal teeth of a discarded hacksaw tapping him over the shoulder, but unfortunately he was trapped in a soiled straitjacket and couldn’t cut himself free without hands.
“Welcome to your final resting place,” announced Lady, slashing Edward with her razor sharp switchblade heels cutting away his bondage and shaved away the final piece of chest hair.
With a wave of her hand she was gone, however the floor still clicked from the departing rhythm of her thunder thighs. Suddenly the water pressure hit him full on and kept picking up steam. Edward was in handcuffs getting cleaned for his crimes while loud filthy rock n roll was playing in the jukebox next door. A maniac was hitting the keys, the electric guitar had brought up two alternating twangs from the gutter, the bass was dirty, and the drums were swinging. The guitar got mean as a third note got added to the mix and screaming combined. While he struggled to stay alive his brother played ghost notes to him from beyond the grave.
Edward was swinging sideways as the fire-hose got cranked to 11. The onlookers were in primitive bliss taping their feet to the beat while he was tortured. The-Ex emperor gritted a mouth that had been dethroned of most teeth as he slowly turned purple like a rare lobster. The water threatened to freeze him stone cold dead.
“MuaHahaha,” the group of henchmen including Simon cackled watching.
Edward’s brain was scratched up like an outlaw country record on a mudding muffin truck. Now he was drinking the jail water, and it tasted kinda soapy. He felt his consensus being hauled underwater into a pool hundreds of cut off feet deep. The skeletons of people drowned surrounded him from all sides floating round a basin. It suddenly developed a ripping current sucking him into whirlpool as it rapidly drained. His lungs filled with water as he was sucked down the void that was a dark drain of nothing.
Edward sputtered and spit out a stream of water waking. It had become very sunny and the grass smelled sweet. The pavement was hot enough to cook an egg and it was cooking him while he lay limply on it. He pulled himself together in the middle of a street filled with parked Crystallacs reflecting a single sun. The houses were uniformly constructed in ordered suburbia. A few birds chirped, children screamed pretending a killer was on the loose, and the succulent smells of hot barbecues smoking cured meats drifted through.
A baby was cackling in a stroller wheeled next to the cleanest car on the block. The woman dangled a pair of dice on strings. as four little hands snatched at the prize. She heard approaching leather shoes on the asphalt and cut off the tickling just as it had commenced. The two strangers stared at each other over convinced they were somehow very familiar with each other's company.
Back in the hot suburbs he was grilling moose meat. It was a treat from a man of the woods. The mosquitoes zapped by a flashy gadget hanging from the gazebo. In the crib a four armed creature gobbled the second dice. His spawn was a demon, and it needed a burping. His woman had the tongue of a snake, and began unpacking frozen meat from a cooler. .
“I brought your favorite from the basement just like you requested,” she said.
The baby hissed as the father burped out clouds of toxic gas. Meanwhile the wife was dressed like a naughty witch and removing the fingers and toes from the garlicky marinade. The kid started throwing a tantrum. Its tendrils led to a mouth that looked just like a lobsters. It was crying to get a taste of the sweet meat cooking.
“Isn’t summer great?” cried the mother, dropping a severed hand to embrace Edward's.
“I love you beautiful,” he whispered, embracing behind her blouse with kisses.
“Behave yourself dear and eat your supper before it gets cold. We don't want the neighbors reporting us for indecent exposure and becoming outcasts,” she scolded.
Edward sat back on his lawn chair and ripped into the charred human flesh. The picture suddenly went blank while he was stoned into a coma. A whistle brought him back to the surface. Edward scales were cleaned and his pimples popped. A log hauler fetched him out of the river running down a dream. His cleaned body chained in a spotless cell. His heart barely kept him alive. The crystals sparked and dusted in his nightmares, but the threat was all psychological terror compared to the reality of being a heartless slave.
Upstairs in her workshop Isabella watched her favorite new prisoner on her crystal ball on mute. She was multitasking on the phone to her gossip crew. They cackled as a full proof plan was hatched to guarantee jungle juice for the royal wedding. Everyone on the call was a witch, but Isabella was the boss of them all.
The plan was hatched and she packed her magic sack full of tricks. At long last she sped out of the open ceiling on her battle broom. The first order of business was a flyover of the desert sandbox where shapeshifters played more than anywhere else. This mission was going to be dangerous, but she was overpowered and would sacrifice her bottom witches if she had to in order to complete it.