Someone
had poured glue in my mouth and hit me in the head with a pipe. Stainless steel schedule 80 by the feel of it. My arms felt like they were full of angry
bees and my stomach was currently on spin cycle. To top it all off, I was blind – which was
bad – although my sense of smell seemed to be just fine.
Normally
I would consider that a good thing, but judging from the smell of the fart that
ripped out of my butt I wasn’t so sure, since it seemed to indicate that a
small woodland animal had decided to take up residence in my colon and then
promptly die there. This kind of thing
didn’t happen when I was nineteen.
The
angel of death approached and extended a fist towards me.
“Here,” Rok said.
“Eat these.”
I held
out my hand and accepted the offering. Like
I was gonna say ‘no’. I took a moment to
consider what to do with the half pound of pills, capsules, lozenges and
suppositories that I was now holding when Rok placed a glass of water in my
other hand. I had almost made the connection
of what I was supposed to do when he spoke again.
“Come
on, knock ‘em back. They’ll make you
feel better.” Rok turned and walked back
to the other side of the room.
I glared
at him for a moment. I would have
figured it out myself eventually. Oh,
well. I started to lift the pills to my
mouth when he suddenly turned.
“Hey, is
there a little white capsule in there?” he
asked.
I looked. There was.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Okay. Hey, don’t eat that one okay?”
“Why
not?”
“It’s a
suicide pill. Cyanide. You’d be dead in 15 seconds. Flat.”
“Oh,” I said, plucking the intruder from the rest
of the pills. “Good safety tip. Anything else in here that might be a
surprise?”
“Nah. Not that I can think of anyway.”
I put
the cyanide pill in my pocket for safe keeping.
Wouldn’t want the little rascal to accidentally find its way into
someplace dangerous, like, say, my stomach.
The rest of the pills looked fairly pharmaceutical so I swallowed them
one by one and hoped for the best.
When I
had finished, Rok was sitting at one of the computer terminals typing
frenetically. Or possibly frantically,
it was too early to tell. Either
something had happened or the deadline for submissions to this month’s
Penthouse Forum was almost at hand.
“What’s
going on?” I said as I struggled to my
feet.
“Bad
things. My contact in Japan has
identified some local activity from our four legged friend.”
I
scratched my head. “He’s in Japan? I thought he was in Europe somewhere.”
“He is in Europe. In Norway?
You know, the country right across the border from Japan?” Rok sighed.
“Duh.”
Yeah. Okay. This
all made sense.
I pulled
out a cigarette and fired it up. It was
nice for a change to consciously do this, although where I got a gold Zippo
with “ZSM” engraved on it I had no idea. I took the last drag and ground the cigarette
out on the floor. Time had no relevance
here.
“So,
Rokko, are you going to fill me in here or what? All that typing you’re doing, there must be
some major communication going on.”
“Yeah,
just finishing up. Let me print it out
for you.” A few more keystrokes and
several sheets of paper spewed from the laserjet. Rok picked them up and handed them to me. “See what you make of that,” he said.
I sat
back in the heated La-Z-Boy, kicked my shoes off, took a sip from my Martini,
and began to enter the mind of my foe.
I’ve enjoyed reading the stories
in your magazine for years, but I never thought they were true. Until recently that is. It happened on a Tuesday night several weeks
ago. I’m a college freshman, and I was
in the dorm working diligently on my chemistry assignment when an insistent
knocking on the door interrupted my studies.
I opened the door slowly and much to my surprise, two of the hottest
looking ladies I have ever seen walked on in, devilish smiles on their
faces. Tight jeans and tighter sweaters
let me know right away that their bodies were made to please. As it turned out, Tracy and Lori (not their
real names, of course) had seen me in class, and decided that they were going
to unofficially welcome me to the university.
. .
My foe
was a pervert. I must have been as well
because by this point I was well entrenched in the story and a Boy Scout troop
had apparently erected a pup-tent in my pants.
I read it to the end, when Bill (not his real name either), Tracy, and
Lori lay sweaty and exhausted on the floor.
I let out a long, satisfied breath.
“Well. What do you think?” Rok said.
“Not bad. But I don’t think you explained very well
when exactly it was that Lori pulled off her sweater.”
Rok
blushed and grinned slyly. “Uh,” he said, “sorry. Wrong stuff.”
He snatched the papers from me and turned back to the computer. His fingers flew over the keyboard for a few
more seconds and the printer spat out a single sheet. “Here, try this.”
By now
the Boy Scout troop had broke camp and I was back to business again. I perused the sheet Rok had handed me. It was much shorter and not nearly as sensual
as what I had read before, but at least it was applicable to the story. It read:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue, I destroyed all the crops in Asia,
And now I’ll destroy all of the crops in Europe as well.
I reread
the note again and pondered it thoughtfully.
I don’t think you can ponder something any other way, but maybe I’ll try
later. I knew one thing for sure: Zodar
couldn’t rhyme worth a shit. Other than
that, the message was hazy. What was he
trying to say? Rok broke my reverie.
“Interesting,
isn’t it?”
“Oh yes. Tells us a lot. Like the fact that he’s going to destroy all
of the crops in Europe. Of course, we
already knew that he was in Europe and we already knew what he was going to be
doing while he was there, but if we pretended we didn’t, this would be big.”
“No, not
that. You can’t take the rhyme
literally, it’s coded. Means nothing as
it is.”
“But. .
. ,” I said, leading him on.
“But if
you take every third consonant and multiply the numerical alphabetical value of
each by the square root of today’s day, date, and year and then assign word
values based on a coded index which, in this case, is found on page 78 of the
March issue of GQ, you get the baseplate data from which you can then
extrapolate the other consonants and all of the vowels and find the real message.”
“Ah, yes. So simple.”
“Yeah. He obviously wanted us to crack it or he
would’ve made it a little harder.”
“Obviously,” I replied.
I looked around for a few moments.
“Darn it, would you believe I don’t have my March GQ? I was sure I just had it. Say, Rok, could you . . I
mean . .
. since you’ve already done the
math . .
.” I held out the message to Rok. If I hinted any harder I’d break his nose.
“Oh
yeah, no sweat.” Rok grabbed the note
and scribbled underneath it for a few moments.
He handed it back. Of course he
handed it back. What the hell else was
he going to do with it?
For the
third time this morning – which is about three times more often than I prefer
in any one month – I began to read:
Good day Mr. Lassiter!
And it will always be Mr. Lassiter to me, for I am no friend, nor will I ever be.
At least
he was rhyming better.
My mission is a simple one:
Revenge! Revenge against those who
created me, for creating me to do battle and then pushing me aside once my
reason for being no longer existed.
Revenge against those for whom my creators had created me to do battle
against, for no longer providing my creators with someone to do battle against
and thus causing my reason for being too no longer exist and subsequently then
giving them reason to push me aside. And
revenge against everyone else, for looking like either those who created me or
those who I was created to do battle against, just to make sure I don’t miss
anybody. Okay, I’ll admit, it’s a tad
more complicated than I originally made it out to be, and I apologize if I
misled you a little bit.
Nevertheless! That is my mission! Again, in summary for those of you who may
still be a little confused: Revenge
against the world!
Sincerely,
Zodar the Spy Moose, Esq.
P.S. – By the way, I don’t have
anything to do with that whole “crop annihilation” thing that’s going on. That’s just some whacked out scheme that Rok
and Stinky Pete thought up to get rich.
My nefarious goal is a little loftier; I’m taking over Disney World!
P.S.S. – I look forward to
crushing you with my mighty antlers.
I
lowered the note.
“Strong
words,” Rok said.
“Yeah.”
Rok
poured something into his mouth, noticed me looking at him, and held his hand
out to me. “Chiclet?”
“No
thanks. Bad memories for me there.”
“Suit
yourself. I think they’re great.”
“Depends
on your past, I guess.”
I
straightened my jacket and donned my hat.
I love donning my hat. Love it so
much I did it again. And then two more
times. Getting my instincts back. Felt good.
“Listen,
Rok,” I said, “we’ve got a little bit of
a problem here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Little bit.”
He was
now seated at the table, quietly filling a couple dozen shot glasses lined up
in front of him with scotch.
“I
figured we might. Let me guess. Note tip you off?”
“You
could say that.”
“Yeah. In hindsight I guess it probably would have
been better not to have included that part about me and Stinky Pete, what with
me doing the translating and all.”
“Probably.”
He
continued filling the shot glasses until all were full. Then sat back and put the bottle on the table
and looked at me.
“You
know, Dick,” he said, “I wish it didn’t
have to be like this. I was just
starting to like you.”
“I
appreciate that. But it’s a little late
for that now.”
“Yeah, I
know. That’s why I’m gonna have to ask
you to drink these.”
I had a
faint idea of what he was planning, but I had absolutely no intention of
allowing it to happen.
“And if
I say no?” I asked.
“Then
I’m gonna have to wrap my biceps around your head and crush your skull.”
Hair of
the dog or crushed skull. Intentions be
damned. Suddenly, having a drink didn’t
seem like such a bad idea after all. Besides,
it had to be 5 o’clock somewhere in the world.
I sat
down at the table across from Rok, looked him straight in the eye, and drank
the first shot.
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