Thrilling Tales! Vol. 1

Bobby woke up to the Mr. Stevenson’s pet rooster cawing from down the street.

            “Good morning Mr. Rooster, today’s going to be a swell day!” he exclaimed without an ounce of grogginess, the smell of his mom’s famous pancakes made sure there’d be none of that. He threw on his trusty shorts and t-shirt, it was summer, and he didn’t have a minute to lose getting down to the old baseball diamond.

            He slid down the bannister the way his mom always told him not to, patted Max the dog on the head at the foot of the stair, and continued towards the aroma of batter.

            “OH LORD!” Bobby yelled as the woman who offered him a plate of three neatly stacked pancakes was not his mother but indeed a six foot tall bipedal octopus monster stuffed into one of his mother’s dresses and wearing a blonde wig.

            “BOOP! BLOOP-WOOP!” replied the monster, gesturing the pancakes toward him in a motherly fashion. If there was something wrong with Bobby’s mother, Max the dog did not seem to notice.

            Bobby slammed the plate o’ cakes out of the beast’s tentacle and into its even more tentacled face. Without a moment’s hesitation he bolted out through the backyard and into the street, cries of SCROOP-NOOOOOOOP! echoing behind him.

            He ran down the street, stopping on the sidewalk before Mr. Stevenson mowing his lawn.

            “Hey-ho, Bobby-boy! How ya lookin’?”

            “Good morning Mr. Stevenson, sir. Have you seen my mother today?”

            “Oh, well let’s see now, not since I saw her come out for the mornin’ pa-SKLERK,” he said, being frozen by a green tractor beam and pulled onboard a gigantic UFO floating overhead, which Bobby seemed not to have noticed until that moment.

            “Leapin’ Lazarus! I bet that’s where mom is!” And before Mr. Stevenson’s legs were just out of reach, Bobby jumped and clung to the man’s pant legs, gazing up into the green pearlescent void of the tractor beam which emitted a ZWORM, ZWORM kind of sound as they were pulled inside.

            Upon reaching the inside of the ship, Mr. Stevenson was being beamed into some kind of stasis pod in a long row of pods. Bobby let go just in time to land on his feet in front of the line of glass prisons. He could see Mrs. Schneebly, and Mr. McMannis the greengrocer, and even Little Timmy No-Legs the wheelchair bound boy, all suspended in tubes filled with green goop.

            He ran along the row, looking for his mother, but to no avail. He reached an archway, leading into another circular room, this one with panels and buttons and lights all over. In the middle of the room was yet another tube, this time containing Bobby’s mother, but around it was an array of terrifying instruments.

            “Mom! Did they hurt you?!”

            “No, sweetie,” she replied, “but you’ve got to get me out of here before they do. To do so you’ll need to travel to the three wings of the spacecraft, each one harder than the last in terms of puzzle difficulty, to acquire the three keys necessary to operate the release mechanism on my cell. Do you want me to repeat that one more time?”

            “No.”

            “Good, now press START to view a map of the ship, the highlighted parts are places you’ve explored-“

            “Uh, mom? Why don’t I just flip this big red lever that says ‘release’?” Bobby asked, pointing towards a very large red lever marked underneath with the word RELEASE.

            “Oh, well I guess that works, too,” his mother answered.

            Bobby pulled the lever, and just as he did so, his mother disappeared, her tube being sucked through the floor and replaced by a huge holographic head, blue and in the shape of a football.

            “CONGRATULATIONS, YOU HAVE PASSED THE FIRST TEST. I AM THE ALL-MIND, I KNOW ALL,” spoke the hologram.

            “If you know everything then why did you have to test me in the first place?”

            “SILENCE. THIS VESSEL REQUIRES THE RAW ENERGY OF HUMAN CHUTZPAH TO RUN. A COMMODITY OF WHICH YOU ARE IN POSSESION OF GREAT AMOUNTS. OF. ALREADY OUR CHUTZP-O-METERS ARE RUNNING OFF THE CHARTS,” the floating face said, nodding toward a screen that displayed meters showing a healthy green level. “NOW YOU WILL SERVE AS OUR NEW POWER SOURCE FOR THE REST OF YOUR DAYS, THAT IS, UNLESS YOU ESCAPE.”

            The head turned toward a hatch that had just slid open, marked ESCAPE, which upon closer inspection dropped immediately into a tube of green liquid.

            “NO, PLEASE DO NOT ESCAPE,” pleaded the All-Mind as Bobby peered down into the tube. Instead, Bobby ran out of the room through another open door, this time presented with a long corridor. Pleasantfield, his town, was visible through a long window. On the opposite wall were two hooks holding identical laser guns, one read DOOM RAY above its hook and the other NOT A DOOM RAY.

            Non-doom ray in hand, Bobby burst through the door at the end of the corridor and into a room containing a throne-like levitating seat turned away from view, surrounded by 4 BLOOP-WOOP-ing octopus monsters wielding spear-like weapons.

            “FANTASTIC,” the All-Mind announced from his throne, “USUALLY THEY PICK THE DOOM RAY, WHICH OF COURSE JUST OPENS A PIT IN THE FLOOR TO A STASIS POD. TRULY MAGNIFICENT CHUTZPAH! GUARDS, SEIZE HIM.”

            But before any of the guards could lay a tentacle on young Bobby, he had blasted the non-doom ray with extreme prejudice into each of their cephalopodan faces with a satisfying ZREEP ZREEP. The room rumbled all around them.

            “YES, EXCELLENT! THIS IS MORE CHUTZPAH THAN I COULD HAVE DREAMED OF! WHAT SAY YOU, BOBBY OF EARTH? WITH THESE POWER LEVELS WE COULD BECOME CONQUERORS OF ENTIRE GALAXIES!” cackled the All-Mind.

            “No thanks, Mr. All-Mind, I have a game to catch,” Bobby replied, leveling the raygun at the throne.

            “No!” cried Mr. Stevenson, swiveling around in the chair, “you wouldn’t shoot your dear old neighbor would you, Bobby-boy? Come along now and rule the universe like a good lad,” he begged as Bobby ascended the steps to his throne.

            “I was always pretty sure you were a pedophile anyway.” ZREEP flashed the non-doom ray, splattering a satisfying blue mist of alien entrails over Bobby’s face.

           

            “Well, I’m sure glad that’s over with,” said Bobby, digging into his pancakes at the kitchen table, “everything’s back to normal.”

            “Not everything, those aliens sure know how to cook a mean pancake!” said Bobby’s mother, holding out a piece, “isn’t that right Max?”

            “JORT-JORT,” said the grotesque crab creature stuffed into a dog costume as it devoured the bit of pancake, and they all laughed happily ever after.