Copyright (c) 1988 Ashtoreth (William Haas) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ What I did on my Summer Vacation by Harry Zaxxon (with graphic bloody details and guitar accompaniment by Cabbage Mandler) So, like, I didn't set out to prove the existence of Christ as I heaved my ass into the Carnagemobile that Monday morning, the week after school let out, but nevertheless it happened. This, you may say, wasn't too likely, con- sidering I'm from a whole different world with totally different belief systems and reality levels, but it honestly happened. Unless, of course, it was just an acid trip. Anyway, it's Monday morning, the week after high school let out. You may say that I'm kind of old to still be in high school. You talk a lot, don't you? Well, what I tell my parents and the police is that I'm absolutely determined to pass high school, no matter how many tries it takes; thus my lack of move- ment from my current grade. In truth it's because it's easier to get laid in high school. People don't know anything about sex except that they have to have it as soon as possible, and so they'll jump anything that moves. Sure, by now there's kind of an age difference, but compared to most anything else I might do in my day-to-day existence, that's positively legal. So, here I am, awake for some reason in the morning. I try to avoid mor- nings, as they tend to have light in them, and light hurts my eyes. Dulcifer Spaxx, an associate of mine, says this is because "I've got them hidden under my fucking hat all the time." Spaxx is a member of the No-Future Crew, the heavy metal band/alcoholic gang I hang around with. His opinions about my eyes are amazing and basically ramble on and on, somewhat like this story (I still haven't gotten to the Christ bit yet). He says that since he's never actually seen my eyes that he actually doubts their existence, but that if they do in fact exist, that I "should let them out occasionally for some fresh air and sunshine, maybe a nice lunch and a party where they might possibly run into some other eyeballs which are looking for a mutually beneficial relationship." I personally didn't know that eyeballs fucked. Okay, so it's the damn morning, right? I fell out of bed, and instantly set out to procure my world-famous failproof hangover cure. This consists of going down to the liquor store and robbing them of several cases of beer (and all their money, of course). The headache that you wake up with makes you look really horribly violent, and helps to let the storekeep know that you mean business. Try to rob the same store, and often, as the owner's constant calls to the police will make it look like he's harassing you and that the calls are nothing more than false alarms. Just make sure no one sees you doing it. So the first thing I did after drinking six or seven beers was to jump into the Carnagemobile, which is this really shitty and powerful car that I "own," and run over to Cabbage Mandler's house. I used him to get rid of the evidence, and in all the years that I've been drinking, I've never known any- one to get rid of evidence as effectively as Cabbage does. "Cabbage" isn't his real name, but his real name is something even more embarrassing. Apparently he changed it because so many of the other kids made fun of him that his parents just couldn't afford the lawsuits anymore. Cabbage moved to Felina from a heavy-gravity planet, which means he can break people's knuckles by breathing on them, and other neat stuff like that. Okay, forget about the Christ bit for now. Seeing as this was summer vacation, we were going to raise some hell. This was because we were tired of what we usually did during school months, which was raise hell. Not much of a difference, except during the summer we have time enough to do it with style. During previous summers we had attempted to start intergalactic wars, trash the fabric of time and space, piss off the gods, things like that. Yet we were determined to somehow top ourselves this summer. That's why we stole the police cruiser. Police are perfectly ordinary and kindly people who happen to take it upon themselves to tell everyone else what to do, without any regard to whose summer vacation they may be ruining. The particular specimen which we encountered was attempting to keep us from getting where we were going on time. Having foiled all attempts by land-based police to stop us (owing to the fact that the Carnagemobile is the most powerful piece of shit in exist- ence, with a top speed of whatever we feel like at the moment), the cops had sent one of their huge hover-cruisers after us, and were attempting, even as I plan to write this story, to grab the Carnagemobile magnetically. We responded to this affront by gently depressing the velocity reduction pedal, thereby causing them to zoom ahead of us in a most amusing way. Police aren't often stupid, however, and they landed in front of us. That's when I put my foot back on the velocity increase pedal. The Carnagemobile slammed into the side of the police cruiser at a speed of better than 200 miles per hour, at my estimation, and it was only the amazing James Bond ejection seats that saved us three (Dul was with us by this time). Unfortunately, the Carnagemobile was totally demolished; but the police cruiser was untouched, and it was this awesome display of imperviousness that convinced us that we had to possess the vehicle. The ejection seats touched down behind some convenient shrubs, and from there we could see that the single officer (oh, that confidence) on the cruiser had come out and was busily taking down our license number, a cop-like and pointless thing for him to be doing, considering that in all likelihood we'd never be driving the thing again, man. Cabbage popped Krystalburger ketchups all over us, and farted loudly to distract the officer while Dulcifer and I crawled into the wreckage and pretended to be horribly mangled. Then, while we distracted him, Cabbage lifted his keys and we all ran into the ship and took off. The officer later vanished without a trace. We believe that he was rubbed out for being so lousy at his job to be fooled by the old ketchup-blood trick. And that's exactly how it happened, I swear. Don't believe any stupid official police press releases which say we killed him and vaporized the body, it's just pure speculation. And besides, Cabbage can't hit that hard without hurting his wrist. Other than that, the police give a fairly accurate account, so much of the rest of this story will be excerpts from the official police report of my summer vacation, taken from witness accounts from our trial, thereby saving me from having to remember any of it. I had a similar memory problem at the trial, as I recall. + + + The police cruiser (which Harry was still working on a name for) barrelled out of Felina's atmosphere, cutting across AT&T (All-powerful Telephone and Teleport) phone zones with total disregard, maxing out at a speed of .92c, a speed only exceeded by the unthinkably powerful ships which the Felinian Empire used to conquer five galaxies back when the Empire was under non-organic rule. The ship had hyperspace capabilities, of course, but Harry wanted to see how much of the planet's atmosphere he could suck along with the ship into space. The ship itself was kind of shaped like a laterally-striated cupcake with far too many landing lights, and the planet below slept easier not knowing that some of the most devastating police hardware in the known Universe was now under the control of a garage band from the south side of Gastorath. + + + It's worth mentioning at this time how large this ship is. Imagine this stud-like guy standing with his arms spread apart. That's me. Now, you see the space between my hands at this moment? Well, imagine the entire time-space con- tinuum minus this space. That's how big the ship is. It's hell trying to turn this ship around, I can tell you. So is fueling it, owing to the fact that there's so little matter in the Universe compared to that which makes up the ship. We periodically had to burn parts of the ship itself when we weren't near a fuel station, and we had these horrible arguments about whose room was gonna be next. Okay, so I know that my description of the ship implies that we'd ALWAYS be near a fuel station, but like I said, it's a bitch trying to turn the ship around. + + + Stealing the ship had made Harry really tense, and he needed to mellow out; luckily he had brought along the first Megadeth album on CD. Slayer made him say "Ha, that's funny," Metallica made him retch, and Iron Maiden made him fall asleep; but Megadeth was just barely tolerable, at moments when he needed relative peace and quiet to think. Cabbage, having a natural affinity for violence, had at once leapt into the police cruiser's main gun chair. "Get away from there, Cabbage," said Harry, since Cabbage had begun to size up suburban/residential areas on the next near- est planet as targets, and it wouldn't do to waste the cruiser's valuable ammo on children and dogs. Cabbage reluctantly left the chair, and then wandered around sulkily until he found an assortment of truncheons. Dulcifer, meanwhile, had been exploring the possibilities of the ship's sub-space radio. "Looking Down The Cross" had just started playing, and it was good, but the treble on the brain-dissolving guitar bit at the beginning wasn't quite right. In order to get that "surround-sound" effect, he channeled it into the galaxy-wide distress signal that all police ships came equipped with. Al- most simultaneously, at least a dozen police and emergency officials replied, but anything they had to say was pretty much drowned out by Dave Mustaine's lunatic ravings. "So what now?" shouted Dulcifer Spaxx over the noise. "We enjoy the ship," said Harry, sitting down on one of the black gnurled leather couches. For about five minutes, they enjoyed the ship. "Now what?" said Dulcifer, growing impatient. Harry thought for a moment. "Revenge plots?" he said. "No, we did that last summer," said Dulcifer, "and besides, we've gotten everyone we needed to." "How about we wipe out innocent bystanders?" suggested Harry. "For God's sake, could you think of something original?" said Dulcifer. From the next chamber came the sound of hardened rubber hitting delicate computer hardware. Cabbage had asked the ship's drink dispenser for a bottle of Chernobyl Vodka. The dispenser had refused, stating that it was not allowed to serve alcoholic beverages to on-duty police; and Cabbage, rather than labor the point, had opted to beat the shit out of the unfortunate machine. Cabbage had read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and now knew enough to avoid the pitfalls which its characters had not. "Well, fuck you, man," said Harry, "How am I supposed to know what to do this summer? I've only been in it a day." "Think, man," said Dulcifer. "I mean, remember the time we profaned the Holy Place of Bazor, and scattered the Five Remnants of the Last Scripture, and then pinned it all on our math teacher, Mr. Levinson? Remember that look on his face when the All-Seeing One shot that lightning bolt up his ass? He looked like he would have shit his pants, if it weren't for the large amount of electrons streaming in the wrong direction." "Yeah," said Harry, laughing. "Those were the days." The noise from the other room was waning, as Cabbage had stopped hitting the machine and was now burrowing his way through it to the chamber where the beverages were stored. "Yeah, and those days can live again, man," said Dulcifer. "We just gotta get an idea, and then get stupid enough to try it, and--" "--And it all falls together," said Harry. Harry thought for a little while longer. "Hey, let's try to blow up Earth again," said Harry. "Well, it'd be a start," said Dulcifer. Earth was located in the galaxy which fell under the jurisdiction of some- thing called the Imperial Galactic Government (which apparently meant that they either thought they controlled the only galaxy in existence, or else thought all the other ones weren't controlled by anyone; Harry had decided he'd better do something about that someday, but he kept putting it off), and the No-Future Crew liked it because they still used nuclear weapons there. Or rather, they hadn't used them yet; which was what peeved Harry and had prompted him to return there time and time again. Also, Earth had never made interstellar contact, and so it was nearly impossible to avoid frightening everyone they came into contact with there. Plus, the beer was good. Beer, fear, and imminent Apocalypse; in short, the perfect place to spend a summer vacation. The journey through hyperspace was pleasant, for the ship was equipped with mechanisms which damped the eye-hurting spatial dilation effects which the light in the ship underwent during hyperspace travel (unlike most of the unlicensed ships which Harry ended up stealing). Cabbage eventually found something he liked to drink and joined them on the bridge. "...and then we tried to get back through the gate, but Bazor's servile demon Yorin was there..." said Dulcifer. "So we put on that Christian-thrash tape, 'Follow Me or Die,' I think it was. Uh oh," said Harry. "Cabbage's got a bottle of F.H.W." F.H.W., or Fucking Huge Worm mezcal, was a beverage which Cabbage was usually kept away from at all times of good judgment, because it caused his alter-ego, El Cabaje, to emerge. However, it wasn't much of an alter- ego, since it was exactly like Cabbage Mandler in all respects except that it liked to wear a sombrero and bandoliers of bullets. "Shouldn't we take that away from him?" said Dulcifer. "Hey, if you wanna try," said Harry. "Besides, we might just need El Cabaje for this one." "All right, but we're gonna be eating at Taco Bell a lot, I hope you know that," said Dulcifer, who got up to see what other toxic delicacies Cabbage had found in the drinks server. Harry watched Cabbage finish the bottle, the looked away suddenly in disgust as Cabbage got to the worm. + + + If anyone even bothered to visit Earth at all, it was Galactipol, doing a brief fly-by; and Harry's ship looked exactly like theirs. Harry set it down next to a 7-Eleven, being sure to maneuver it to the side at the last minute in order to knock over the dumpster. It being three in the morning, no one even noticed them land. Harry entered the store to acquire the massive amounts of Big 'Un sandwiches and Old Milwaukee that would be necessary for a summer vacation of this magnitude. It was about this time that Cabbage slipped out of the ship to perform the extremely gratuitous part of this story. [PAGE MISSING]