Tenek, The Reaper’s nostrils flared jets of black flame. He raised his scythe, and teleported behind his thoroughly-distressed prey, a prty yung qt by the name of Stephanie.
“Another fine addition to my collection” spaketh the Reaper, in a gravelly tongue indecipherable to the human ear.
“Like hell!” shouted the girl unexpectedly, her elbow bashing into the Reaper’s face (also unexpectedly), sending him reeling. Hell indeed. Posited the Reaper, rubbing his bruised cheek.
“I’m not going to be just another used-up floozy chained up in your basement, creep!”
“Doth my appearance not frighten ye?” the Reaper inquired, a splotch of red spilling over onto his best blue steel.
“No, but it does piss me off. And disgust me. Chad, tell this fucking creep to jump off of something tall.”
As if things could get any worse for our dear Reaper, out of nowhere, a hand clapped him on the shoulder.
“Alright little buddy, I don’t think my girlfriend wants to play pretend with you any more.” said a stone-cut behemoth of a man.
“I wasn’t playing along!” The girl huffed indignantly. “Tell you what… this guy really pisses me off. If you can get rid of him right now… I’ll do that thing you like.”
Her cheeks flushed red.
“With the real chocolate syrup, right? Not the low-fat?” Chad asked intently.
Stephanie shuffled uncomfortably. “Oh, come on! Last time we used the ‘real’ stuff it took, like, three showers to get it off! Besides, what’s so bad about low-fat? You’re always telling me I need to lose-”
Abruptly, the hand on the Reaper’s shoulder was lifted. Like a stone from a sling, he lunged at the hapless lass, who recoiled in horror. Unfortunately, just as he was about to finally grasp her firm-delicates, he was yet again grabbed from behind.
Peaches and Pineapples! sworeth the Reaper, frustrated that he once again be denied his prize. Tantalus would have a field day with this.
“Easy there, boy. If you actually touch her, we’re gonna have a problem.” said Chad. “So… you don’t know this guy?”
Stephanie shook her head. “I’ve never seen him before in my life!”
“Hmm… guess I should turn him in to security. Don’t want him scaring anybody else with that pool noodle.”
The Reaper was mortified that his implement of destruction would ever by spoken of in such dismissive (yet accurate) vocale.
“Hearken, ye mortal! Ye have bested me in combat! Behold your heavenly reward… a curse! On the eve of All Hallows… After the third birthmark of thine first son’s tenth…”
The reaper trailed off briefly, counting on his hands “...bedstone…” he continued uncertainly, “...he shall suffer from a severe case of sleep apnea! Ye shall hasten to the medicine-man of your village, but Lo! There shalt’nt be nothing to be done! For the affliction shall be gone! And NEVER TO RETURN!” he finished, cackling maniacally.
“That’s… good?” Chad said, taking an extra moment to try (and fail at) parsing what he’d just heard. His brow furrowed, concerned. “You on any medication, buddy? Does your mom give you any ‘special vitamin pills’ with breakfast?”
The Reaper could stand to be mocked no more.
“Heathen! Witness my glory! And tell your people what you’ve witnessed here!” he shouted, ripping off his clothes, thereby freeing himself from Chad’s grasp.
“Make him stop!” Stephanie shrieked. “EWWWWWWWWWWW!”
Chad reached out for the Reaper a third time, but Tenek had learned this lesson.
Fool me thrice? Nay! For you can’t fool that which is already a fool! he guffawed internally.
He deftly sidestepped the salvo and, with his final garments discarded, leapt into a quantum wormhole leading to the opposite side of the known universe (think rotational symmetry).
“Wait…. The fuck?” shouted Chad, unable to believe his eyes. He tried passing a hand through the spot where the Reaper had disappeared, only to come up empty - the passage only opened for 15 femtoseconds every hundred years.
It would take a complete lunatic to time an escape that perfectly, let alone to measure the precise conditions of the wormhole, and all 1.104 yottillion similar wormholes just in case the alpha plan failed. Only a raving madman would attempt something that unlikely. And for what? What was he even after here? There’s no fucking way he only wanted to cop a feel, an entity with his skills could transform into boobs at will! Of any size, shape, and occupation! Sexy nurse boobs, sexy firefighter boobs… or sexy police officer boobs if he wanted to feel a cop.
Stephanie glanced around, searching for any sign of her assailant. Failing that, she took a second pass, scanning for anything out of place.
The sun was setting peacefully over the horizon. A gentle breeze rolled through, blowing a piece of paper into her hand. If it were any other moment in her life, Stephanie would have let go of it without a second thought. But today was today, and she was immediately possessed to pick it up and read the messy scrawl.
Why is the smartest being in the known universe such a drooling crayon-muncher?
----------------------------------------
It was just another peaceful day aboard The Inferno.
With the ship pseudo-anchored off the eastern coast of the CMB cold spot and the famously capricious captain away on business, the crew hardly knew what to do with themselves. Naturally, on a vessel such as this, the devil made work for idle hands. However, just as the champagne bottles were being looted from storage, the bowling pins set up, and the dwarves oiled down, The doors of Tatarus opened with an ominous hiss, like this:
Hisssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
Tenek strode into the command chamber, flanked by his highest-ranking lieutenants. Legs were hastily uncrossed and removed from desktops. Ties were straightened. Browser histories were deleted.
“Lhathorpharaos - status report.” said the Reaper.
“All systems are nominal.” lied the underling, a thin robusque humanoid with two arms and two legs.
The captain blinked, surprised. At over 1.84595 parsecs in length, The Inferno was the largest nonspontaneous assemblage of matter in the cosmos - designed by an extremely egotistical race of aurochs whose (rather small) dicks looked like miniature spaceships. Trillions of systems worked in harmony (or, more often, not) to keep the spacecraft operational at all times. For all of these systems to be nominal… it was unheard of.
“Even in the cargo hold?” the captain pressed.
“Especially the cargo hold.” responded Lhathorpharaos, purposely not specifying which cargo hold he really meant.
“And the prisoners?”
“All alive and accounted for.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it… Maintain present location, I’m going to have a look around.” said the Reaper, turning to leave. Lhathorpharaos tensed up.
Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.
“Oh, and… all the festivities that were about to commence… go ahead with them. Bowl a strike for me.”
Lhathorpharaos relaxed and returned a guilty smile. “Yes, sir. At once.”
The captain walked out. Legs returned to desks. Browsers were fired back up, and hands were tucked discreetly back into their respective pants pockets.
It might seem a little lax for the command center of the most powerful warship in the universe, but the truth was, there wasn’t a war to be fought at the moment. The Galactic Empire was generally well-run and meritocratic these days, so the great and powerful Reaper only flexed his might when some young political upstart broke the intergalactic bro code regarding web-reaction WMDs.
On top of that, the captain preferred to keep things slice-of-life as much as possible. Financial markets run on stability, so a toked-up and zonked-out Inferno was far better for everybody than letting a bunch of trigger-dicks run amok, bathing the interior with the splooge of wrath.
The first dwarf was brought to the bowling floor. The contestants took their seats, lacing up their plywood gliders.
“Were you able to extract any telegraphic access codes this time, sire?” asked an imposing demonic presence at the captain’s right. It was eight feet tall, with red, boiled skin and a pair of enormous black horns protruding from its skull. While it sported no wings or tail, it’s business-formal attire and receeding white hairline gave it that classic rich contract-demon look that all the nymphlets were fawning over these days.
Tenek kicked a crumpled Coke can that had been placed at that precise location for this precise purpose.
“No way, I’m still working out how to appear before them without freaking them out. I’m light-years away from getting a girl’s number.”
The demon nodded knowingly. “Unfortunate. Did you follow my advice?”
The captain glanced at him, irritated. “Yeah, Mike, I did.”
“I stand by what I sad: You won’t make any progress by standing around passively waiting for the girls to make a move. You have to charge in and grab the bull by the horns.”
“I did that!- well, I tried to… grab the horns… but it turns out they don’t like it when you try to grab… the horns.” the captain petered off awkwardly. “What would you know about this stuff anyway? Your kind are among the least romantic in the… everywhere!”
Mike frowned, offended. “That’s correct. But look at me for a second - for a high-archetype demonoid such as myself, I’m not a very attractive guy.”
Tenek looked at Mike for a second. Mike was a demon: a nightmarish vision of fear and death.
“I suppose so.”
“Right, but what about my wife?”
“Oh, Sammy? She’s bangin’”
“Exactly. Now, how do you think I pulled that off?”
“A succinctly-phrased, yet all-encompassing contract.”
“Precisely.” the demon said, punctuating his statement by wagging a finger. “One look at my monster contract, and I couldn’t get her off of me. She wasn’t the only one, either. I took quite a few girls out for a 30-day trial period before I settled on her. But once she let me sneak a peek at her paperwork - hnnggg. I’ve never met a woman with such smooth transitions.”
“But see, that’s the problem.” the captain interjected. “Your kind can be entirely won over by writing ability. Archaehumans are completely different! They’re known to be the most romantic species out there. The men are easy enough, I’ve met some who can make do with nothing but a jar of peanut butter… but the women…” he shuddered.
“Amen.” the demon replied.
----------------------------------------
The doors of Tartarus slid apart with a foreboding… wheezing squeak.
“Damn things need lube.” noted the captain.
“Yes sir.” Mike concurred. “Unfortunately, our reserves of lubricant have been depleted due to recent…” he stopped himself before he could continue. The captain nodded, understanding.
Hundreds of floors down, the first dwarf was hurled down the lane, leaving a sticky trail as it went, but not losing any of its forward momentum as it devastated the line of bowling pins. A perfect strike.
On paper, Tartarus was the central, most impregnable prison within the greatest prison in the universe. It would take a fleet of hostile ships to even approach The Inferno, an army to reach these gates, and two armies working simultaneously from both sides to get them open.
It was supposed to house only the darkest, most deranged criminals of all time, tormenting them for their sins for all eternity. In this civilized age of law and order, multiple life sentences are far from symbolic.
On paper.
In reality, the occupants of this pit of despair had finished serving their time eons ago, but had simply opted to remain. While Tenek was duty-bound to ensure that prisoners could never leave before they had served their sentence, due to a legal loophole in the early days of The Inferno, he was not allowed to force them to leave.
But why would anybody choose to remain in this dominion of dread?
Well…
“Almost… there…” said a tall, well-toned archaehuman, standing neck deep in a maroon swimming pool. His muscles tensed as he strained, on his tiptoes, reaching upwards with all his might, bicycle-kicking his fingertips, fighting for every inch.
Unfortunately, he would never reach the low-hanging fruit hanging above him.
This was by design.
The man’s name was Tantalus.
For various crimes against archaehumanity that shall go unmentioned, he had been sentenced by the courts to fifty lifetimes of designer torture, followed by 120 hours of community service.
“Why don’t you try jumping for it?” Tenek asked as he and Mike strolled up to the edge of the swimming pool.
Tantalus frowned. “If I do that, she’ll just stand up. At least from here, I get a better view.”
It was true. Tenek only wanted to see him jump the way a kid at a zoo wants to see the tiger try to leap the pit and guardrails. He checked his watch and frowned.
“Shouldn’t you be heading home, Lathra? Your shift’s over.” he asked, addressing the woman whose ample, succulent breasts were dangling just out of the man’s reach.
“~Yeah, I know, Mr. Captain sir.” she pouted. “It’s just nice to feel wanted every once in awhile.”
“You’re here every day for eight hours, isn’t that enough?”
The woman giggled, every heave sending shockwaves down her portable waterbeds. “You just don’t understand women, do you?”
The captain grinned back. “Hey, I’m trying. You should head downstairs - it sounds like they’re having a good time with your cousins.”
“Hey! They’re not my… I’m not that short!” she protested, jerking her head to slap Tenek in the face with the scaly tail growing from the back of her head.
“Don’t drink and drive, now. Say hi to Carl for me!” the captain waved as the woman hipswingingly sauntered away. Then he turned his focus back to the man in the pool.
“Never took you for the kind of archaehuman who would go for a Xenthian. Guess this place has changed you, eh?” he asked.
“If the face is human, then I’m coomin’.” Tantalus answered in a rough voice. “I’m just working on my… how do you say… worldly and refined palate.”
“You should try the wine.” suggested Tenek, his inner zoo-child resurfacing. “I deactivated the ferrocompounds.”
“You can’t, that’s not how it works.” Tantalus frowned. But he cupped his hands and tried to drink some of the pool water anyway, just be sure. Unfortunately, as he drew his hands close to his face, the liquid seeped from between his fingers, falling back into the pool.
Tenek dipped his own hand into the pool and took a sip of the liquid. It tasted like mildly chlorinated tap water (because that’s what it was).
“Mmmmmm, delicious. Finest on the ship, actually.” Tenek moaned, closing his eyes in mock ecstasy.
“Did you come here to mock me? Have you been demoted to my new prison guard?” asked Tantalus. “Because I don’t think you have the requisite skillset to do the job.” he said, squeezing his chest suggestively.
Tenek shook his head, dropping the facade. “You know why I came here.”
Tantalus cracked a grin. “Failed again, huh?”
Tenek nodded sheepishly.
“You did what I said, right?”
“I did!” Tenek replied indignantly. “You told me to picture my goal clearly in my mind, and reach for it with all my might!”
“And?”
“And I did! I tried going straight for the… goal, but she didn’t seem to like that.”
“Maybe if you allocated more of your brainpower to social prowess, you’d remember that I was being metaphorical.”
It was the obvious answer. Tenek’s shoulders slumped.
“You of all people should know why I can’t do that… after all, you’re immortal too, right?”
“Theoretically.” Tantalus corrected. “It was part of my punishment after all… though it kinda grew on me after awhile.”
“Do you have any more insight for me about your species?” said Tenek, cutting to the heart of the matter. “Something simple… that I can recall even in my distracted state.”
“No money, no honey.”
Tenek snapped his fingers. A bottle of wine and a smorgasbord of apps were brought forward. Tantalus grabbed a cracker, dipped it into the fermented bovinoid effluent and savored a satisfying crunch.
“Alright, here’s what you gotta do.” he said after a moment, wiping crumbs from his mouth.
“Women love to laugh. Remember this: If you can make a bitch giggle and laugh, you can make her cheeks jiggle and clap.”
Tenek nodded. Surely, I can remember that.
A slogan as simple as that should be a cinch to remember.
It even rhymes.
There is no possible way I can screw this up.