Happening at the Mansion

An emotional fight and then something not quite of this world happens?

Chapter 1 – Leave
“Fuck you right in the heart, you ungrateful cold, sniveling snitch bitch!” She leaned into the last word forcefully as she raised both of her middle fingers at the receding car.
The driver looked back at her, head, shoulder, and arm thrust through the window even as the vehicle raced down the dusty road. “And may the grass never grow where you live and stand!” He yelled and pulled himself back into the car as he rounded the corner.
Amanda lowered her hands, watching the car turn the corner and disappear. Turning the corner of her life and vanishing from her existence. The thought of being alone without his steadying presence filled her with equal parts euphoria and despair.
She turned about, crying as she did.
The tears streaked down her face leaving tracks in the dirt that caked it. She wiped at it with the sleeve of her once white shirt as she stamped up the stairs that led to the filthy back deck.
As she stamped, the stairs creaked and one of the boards made a cracking sound. She looked over her shoulder as the snapping sound broke through her mood. Suddenly she felt the urge to run back down to the driveway from which his red 1988 Mazda RX-7 had departed.
She fought it. Squaring her shoulders resolutely, she continued her trek up the wooden stairs, pushing her feet down with a controlled fury, forcing the boards to protest at each footfall.
Only a short flight of steps, she arrived at the top and stopped to stare at the sparsely furnished space. A swing set for two in the corner, the cushions worn and frayed. Nothing else. She placed her hand on the doorknob and turned it, pushing with her shoulder. Braced for the furnace heat of the laundry room.
As the door swung open, silently, “as if the hinges had just been oiled by John.” she reflected, she heard it. A quiet snick. Metallic and purposeful. She knew the sound and her body remembered it too. Without further thought she threw herself backwards away from the door.
But that was too late. It had been far too late even when she was still climbing the steps. The plasma round caught her dead center. It blasted through the flimsy dress she was wearing. Burned it to dregs and left a smoking crater in her corpse. The plasma bolt’s impact flung Amanda’s cadaver clear of the landing to sprawl awkwardly in the badly tended flower garden at the bottom of the steps. It settled there without protest, leaking blood with a curl of smoke rising from the slackly opened mouth.
The steps creaked again, this time with greater groans of protest as if an infinitely heavier weight were levied against them.
The monstrous figure that slowly paced down them, explained the piteous creaking. Standing at least eight feet tall, the figure was humanoid. Its face was entirely hidden by an almost comically large hat. A sombrero it might have been called except for the distinctly cowboy hat peaks that it held. The hat shadowed the face and completed the rest of the outfit. The enormous, clearly armored trench coat that swept down to the figure’s heels. The leather trousers tucked into massive boots that surely were not bought at any normal shoe store. The smooth movement of the figure suggested an implacability. An inevitability. And an unstoppable juggernaut nature. The figure’s right arm was cocked, holding a massive weapon over its shoulder. The gun was easily five feet in length. It was smoking slightly from its tubular end.
Reaching the bottom of the steps the figure nudged the body lying there in undignified repose. It turned the nudge into a kick that rolled Amanda’s destroyed meat over onto its front.
The figure bent, its face exposed as it did so. A vicious crocodilian face. No human eyes were present. Just the slitted impenetrable orbs of a predator. Its short snout ended in twin nostrils which twitched actively as if sampling the air. Somehow it seemed male.
The sniff that the creature emitted was terrifyingly human though. And then it spoke. Its voice the crush of gravel as it destroyed metal tools. The smell of the thing, if anyone were to have been present to scent it, was that of heated oil. Not cooking oil. Machine oil. The kind you would smell on a hot summer day down at the racetrack.
“Nullified.” It fished what looked like a smart phone from a recess in the massive trench coat and continued to speak into it.
“Your target is down. I expect payment to my account immediately.” The creature did not wait to hear whatever was on the other end of that call had to say. He simply slid the communicator back into its recess. And stood, holding a small cylinder in its left hand.
It began to walk away heading towards the small shed squeezed in against the house just off the driveway. As it walked, it negligently dropped the cylinder onto Amanda’s brutalized corpse.
Moments later, there was a flash, and the body burst into flames. The crocodilian creature did not turn, and arriving at the shed pulled the door open ducking to walk inside.
The quiet that dominated the scene was interrupted abruptly by a fierce growl that emanated from the shed. The sound of something mechanical. And then right through the closed door, the crocodilian burst. He was astride an enormous motorcycle. A Harley of unearthly proportions.
The vehicle and its oversized rider erupted from the shed in a welter of wood. The hat was still firmly atop the enormous figure. Glued there somehow. It did not move an iota even as the bike accelerated down the driveway kicking up gravel and dust in an expanding rooster tail from the truck sized rear tire.
The bike left the driveway and hit the paved highway, turning the same corner that John had also traversed earlier. The bike’s exhaust and engine noise was punishingly loud and grew louder as the rider leaned back and increased speed. As it turned the corner there was a sudden crackle in the air and with a peal of thunder the figure and racing bike disappeared entirely.
As it disappeared there was an echo of laughter.
 
Chapter 2 – Investigation
The spinning lights of the police cruiser parked in the little driveway were irritating to the eyes. And Landry, the post woman did not restrain herself in telling the sheriff how she felt. “Can’t you turn those damn things off? I have cataracts you know!” She stood in front of sheriff Gains with her arms akimbo.
“I heard this motorcycle and I saw it too. Biggest bike I’ve ever seen. You know John – my husband – he had one too. That’s why I knew it was a bike.” Landry continue talking as she habitually did.
“Maam, can we start at the beginning please?” Gains had cocked his hat back, pen and notebook in hand as he tried to take notes and keep up with the twitch old woman in postal gear.
Landry ignored his plea and continued to speak as if he had simply urged her to continue. “Yes, so I knew it was a Harley too. But I’ve seen all the Harley’s you know?” She looked at Gains, cocking her head, a curious avian of entirely unwanted intelligence. “It weren’t no Harley. It must have been one of those big new Japanese jobs.” She paused, picking her nose as she looked skywards in thought. “No, could be Taiwanese. I dunno. But anyway then it disappeared right there at the turn up there.” She pointed with her whole arm and nodded her head vigorously.
“Ok, so you did not witness anything happening here though?” Gains was scribbling as he spoke. “I mean, you heard the bike, but didn’t actually see anyone right?”
Gains sounded hopeful as he said that last. “Maybe I can get this old nut away from me and get back to that cheeseburger.” He thought longingly back to the container from Big Burger. It was sitting on his desk back at the station and was getting cold. He sighed. “I tell you what Ms. Uhh?”
“Landry! Postmistress Landry!” Landry said with pride, tapping her chest to make plain she was referring to herself. “And I seen a lot you know and it weren’t no man, is what I think!” She was still picking her nose.
“Oh, so you saw what did this then?” Gains waved his pen at the burnt corpse at the foot of the stairs. The fire had been intense, and the body was utterly unrecognizable, but the flames had not touched anything else, not even the grass which was dry as tinder.
“Yup I saw it good. It was a Twillian from Centauri. You know my John was friends with some strange types. One or two from Centauri. I can tell you stories.” Landry had pulled her fingers from her nose and wiped the tips on her blue trousers.
“What?” Gains goggled. “This old woman is batshit. Why the frag am I stuck here with this mess.” He almost spoke his thoughts aloud. But restrained himself and instead said “I see, so right, a Twillian riding a bike. Sorta like those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles?” He chuckled aloud, proud of the joke that he’d just made.
Landry was unimpressed and simply sniffed and said “No, not like that show. But whatever, can I go now?”
“You’re free to go.” Gains gestured her away with relief and then climbed back into his cruiser. He picked up the radio transceiver and keyed it. “Sheila, where’s that ambulance?”
The radio squawked sharply then a clipped voice came back. “Ten minutes out Sheriff.”
Gains sighed again and put the transceiver back onto its hook. He leaned his seat back and settled in for a short wait.
Landry for her part was already walking back up the driveway to her postal tricycle that she had left there. “Damned idiots on this planet. Think the whole galaxy is empty. Makes me wonder why we decided to retire here.” Her thoughts were a swirl of annoyance. “A Twillian operating here – crap – the neighborhood has gone to.” She did not finish the thought, instead climbing on her tricycle and then pedaling it furiously to her next stop at the Miller’s house a mile down the road.
 
Chapter 3 – Hiring
Up on the orbiting battleship, the Kar Al Malcin, the crew was settling in for the second half of their diurnal ritual. Conversation was at a dull murmur and officers were mostly standing to attention on the bridge awaiting announcement from fleet captain T’kin Art Mun.
Down in the mercenary chambers towards the rear, bilge section of the vast floating fortress, there was a different sort of energy. The creatures down there were not interested in the rituals of the naval complement. They were motivated entirely by the spectacle and the acquisition of money.
One of those creatures was a towering Centaurian, whose only identification was the triple bars stamped into his chest, just below his collar bone. Currently that creature was seated in a massive, wheeled chair with his feet up on what could only be described as a desk. He was rubbing idly at the markings on his chest. “That vetch eating cur, this thing is infected!” He cursed quietly to himself. The words in English for some inscrutable reason.
With a sudden spasm of fury he rose from his seat, grabbing the flat communication panel off his desk and hurling it against the wall. The iridescent green of the wall flared sharply as the brick sized comm unit impacted it. The unit shattered explosively and the massive Centaurian threw back his head and roared!
“I swear it! I swear it now on my own name, on the name of my brood. I – Al Kranth of Lotwill nestings – I shall find you Minius. I shall find your hairless hide and I shall tan it for my wall!”
The roar ended in a crescendo and Kranth slammed his fists down on the desktop. It trembled under the impact but remained whole.
Completing his oath, Kranth sat back down and fished about in a drawer of the desk, pulling forth another brick sized comm unit.
The chamber door irised open as Kranth finished setting the comm unit on his desk.
“Kranth of Lotwill! You young snakeling!” Standing at the now open portal was another giant. This one unclothed from chest down to a massively buckled pair of trousers. The material of the trousers seemed to flow of their own accord.
As Kranth looked at them, they changed color slowly to match the green of the chamber. “Mottle camouflage.” Kranth thought idly. “Franthius, you arrive as you die one day. Opening chamber doors unannounced!” Kranth gestured to a seat before his desk that had silently oiled up from the floor.
Franthius strode into the chamber, a limp to his gait. He took the proffered seat, planting his own immensely booted feet on the deck in mimicry of Kranth’s posture just moments before.
“The guild has a job for you. Straight from space commander T’kin.” Franthius began without preamble. “You executed that last rebel with exactitude. She is grateful. But now she has knowledge of another. Hidden. On that same dirty, dry planet.” Franthius sniffed suddenly, his tongue darting out of his mouth and licking his nostrils. “Much like this space here in fact.” He looked around with disdain.
Kranth did not answer. Merely stared at Franthius. His slitted eyes occasionally closed in a slow mechanical movement. His giant form coiled, but tensed.
Franthius held the gaze and then nodded. “Find her. Find the arch-traitor. She goes by the human name of PostMistress. T’Kin has stipulated eight orbital periods for this to be done by. Eight.” Franthius held up a six fingered hand and then supplemented with two more fingers from the other.
“What is the reward for this?” Kranth finally growled. His voice angry, challenging.
“Twenty caskets of fuel. Well above standard for this sort of thing you realize.” Franthius looked away, glancing at the scattering of ceramics and plastics that littered the floor behind him. “You should control that anger of yours. Another comms set destroyed?”
Kranth merely grunted. Then stood and raised his hand, finger outstretched. “It shall be done. I am bonded.”
Franthius stood at that and grasped Kranth’s finger. “Aye, you are bonded. I have your mark and your scent.”
With that Franthius left, the door irising slowly shut behind him.
Kranth for his part remained standing, having watched Franthius’ departure from the corner of his eye. His massive hand dipped to the communications brick and jabbed at its surface. “Prepare my landing ship, load my bike. I go to the hunt this moment.” Characteristically he did not wait to hear any reply. He merely strode around the desk and slapped a control on the opposite wall.
The wall swished aside exposing a view to an enormous hangar bay. Below him, Kranth spotted his personal cruiser. Already the maintenance crew was hard at work, pushing that ludicrously sized Harley up the ramp into the cruiser’s hold.
Nodding in satisfaction, Kranth slapped another control and the wall swished back. He turned and then stamped out of the chamber through the irising doors and into the corridor beyond.
Moments later he was seated at the controls of his cruiser. His support personnel, a diminutive Centauran with the forgettable name of Lash sat beside him and was already manipulating the launch controls and advising the battleship’s bridge crew of his flight plan.
Kranth watched Lash complete his tasking, thinking idly that one day Lash would make good feasting. He could almost feel the crunching and taste the delicious iron that would accompany it. “Yes, just another few cycles, and this one shall certainly slake my thirst.”
Kranth looked away and then said, “Begin the mission clock.”
 
Chapter 4 – The Hunt Begins
The lander spiraled slowly through the clouds, pausing momentarily as it pierced the lower layers. The hull sparkled briefly and then the whole thing disappeared.
“Active camouflage engaged, lord.” The pilot, Lash was dutiful in his actions and words. His short tongue flicked out slowly and he bowed his head towards his controls even as he addressed Kranth, who was seated unmoving beside him.
“We shall make landfall in a few moments. I have made ready your tools and your transportation is fueled and ready for your use.” Lash continued in quiet and measured tones. “I offer my prayers for your hunt. May your teeth find and rend and wet themselves.” Lash bowed his head further.
Kranth remained unmoving. But the low growl that emanated from his chest indicated that he was alert. That and the sudden sweep of his enormous hand grasping Lash about the throat.
His fist easily encompassed Lash’s neck and he shook it, not un-gently, but with enough force to establish something – a control. “You have done well these past cycles Lash.” Kranth paused and forced Lash to turn his head towards him. Looking directly into Lash’s eyes, Kranth spoke again. “We arrive on alien soil. Do not think to run from me. Do not think that your status changes here amongst these primitives.” Kranth opened his mouth wide, revealing rows of obsidian, sharp stone like teeth. “I hunger for flesh from the home world. And I promise that you will feed my stomach if you should cross me.” Kranth released Lash’s neck.
“I swear it by the master’s younglings! I am of good service!” Lash squeaked in fear.
“Good. We see each other true.” With that Kranth stood and stomped to the rear of the vessel, his heavy trench coat brushing against Lash’s arm.
Kranth descended the short ramp leading to the crafts bay, his steps a steady thumping against the cultivated green metal of the ship. He did not look backwards as he walked away. Had he done so, he might have seen Lash rubbing his neck staring at his receding back with a murderous look.
Lash’s thoughts, so carefully schooled normally were for the moment a whirlwind of hot hatred. “Upon a time, I shall break that arrogant predator on the rocks of his own sunning!” Lash imagine the scene, he with a knife of sacrifice, plunging it repeatedly into Kanth’s face and then running it down, flensing the fat off the body and throwing the meat to the little hatchlings that wormed about in the dirt. Oh vengeance!
In an almost human gesture, Lash shook his fist, glimpsing his reflection in the forward screens. The scaly face was elegantly long, flattened at the snout and with blue-gray eyes, handsomely slitted. He would have been a high lord of his settlement if not for the debt that low water breathing leggling had forced upon his family. His tongue darted out briefly, licking at his nostrils and he looked around himself guiltily and then busied himself bringing the ship to a hover just above a ribbon of hard black surface that the locals called roads.
Having established the hover Lash flipped switches and toggles on the console and listened to the rumbling noise below him. The embarkation ramp lowering. The sudden roar of a petro-fueled mechanism assaulted his ears and he raised his hands to protect his delicate ears.
Below, Kranth was sitting astride the massive Harley. It was facing the open rear of the landing craft, hovering at least a hundred meters above the road surface. He revved the bike hard, and his tongue flicked out to touch his eye. The pleasure of the moment was extreme and he shuddered briefly. He anticipated a short deployment. The female non human, PostMistress, was going to shortly be as terminated as that other rebel. Neither one would prove a challenge. Perhaps he would feast upon this PostMistress. If her blood was black not that disgusting red of the denizens of this world. His revving continued and he reflected that the sound was probably brutalizing the ears of his thrall, Lash. He revved the bike even further. His tongue flickering back and forth with greater speed. Finally with a sudden surge, he launched the bike out into the open.
It sailed forwards and fell in a graceful arc towards the road. The rear wheel touched the tarmac and the already spinning tire thrust the bike forward, the front wheel rearing into the air like a mount from the home world.
 
Chapter 5 – The Prey Stings
Kranth rode the screaming hog through the center of the town. His noisy passage kicking up dust and rattling the windows on the sparse store fronts that littered the street like broken teeth. The hat was once again seated firmly on his head. The image projector built into it sparkled as he rode and the small humans he rode past jumped out of his way, yelling epithets and shaking their pathetic fists.
“Watch were you’re going!” An older man pulled his children closer to him as the bike roared past. “Damned bikers!” He spat in the dirt and yelled after the bike. “I’ll call the Sheriff on you rude bastards! I don’t care if you’re part of the Vandals club!” He cursed and walked his children into the shelter of the local optometrist. His littlest, a precocious little girl, tugged on her father’s arm. “Papa, it was that lizard man again! Is he going to bring presents?” She smiled earnestly.
“No Liza, that was just a rude, fat, slob biker from that gang out of town.” Papa shook his head in annoyance and nudged both of his kids into the waiting room.
Kranth for his part, was utterly unconcerned with the locals. They could get out of the way, or they could be ridden down and squashed by the enormous wheels on his bike. His mind was utterly focused on the hunt, and he had the scent of his quarry. Her electronic spoor anyway.
He glanced down at the slate strapped to his thigh and saw that the blip had not moved. “A leggling. I shall rend this one, limb from limb.” Kranth’s thoughts slipped into a fantasy of violence that his kind so often succumbed to. He was so absorbed by the thoughts that he almost overshot the narrow unpaved road that led upwards to the target’s small living construct.
He growled with annoyance at that slip of discipline, skidding the bike into a steep entirely impossible – to earth conveyances – turn. He rode up the gravel and dirt pathway, kicking up rocks as he went. The bike’s roar had diminished to a throaty growl as he slowly eased the thing towards the house that sat squat and dirty at the top of the driveway. It’s tin roof was missing parts of it and the flag that sagged limply over the front door was a blue and yellow with a red horse prancing in the middle.
“She flies the standard of the Catarrian Third! The gall of her. I shall take her alive and force an expiation before the commander herself!” Kranth found insult in everything. Most especially living things. But this was more insult than he usually accepted. The Catarrian’s had fought his own great grand sire and won. They had been responsible for the first Scattering. Then, with the coming of the high lord’s fleets, the Catarrians had been defeated, and remanded to prison colonies. How was this creature flying their standard?
As Kranth completed his thoughts, his bike nosing to a stop next to the empty parking bay to the side of the house, he caught a sharp smell.
He sniffed, then huffed deeply.
“Trap!” He looked about wildly knowing instantly that he had erred. Fatally so. As he looked about, he unlimbered the giant gun that he had used on Amanda. He swept it out of its holster to the side of his hog. Bringing it up to ready position and pivoting in his saddle.
As the gun settled into Kranths grip, there was a quiet shushing sound and a single arrow with a metal shaft suddenly smacked into his eye. The thing sank deeply in bringing forth a bellow of pain and rage from Kranth who immediately dropped his rifle and grabbed the arrow by its shaft.
It was to no avail. The shaft vibrated on its own and began to whirr, drilling deeper into Kranths eye and then into his brain. Within the first second of impact, Kranth was entirely dead. Propped upright on his bike by the enormous weight of the armored trench coat that he wore.
The arrow continued to whirr and after a while a jet of bluish blood spurted from around its disappearing fletching. Then there was just a churning, crunching as whatever the projectile was ate its way through Kranth and then breaking through the back of his reptilian head, ceased, reversed, and then fell from his eye.
Postmistress Landry slid off the roof of the house dropping into a combat crouch that utterly belied her apparent age. She slid slowly to the stilled and statue like figure still sitting athwart its bike. The engine was still idling, grunting gently to itself. She picked up the arrow and examined it. “Not too bad. Not too bad at all. Still got the hunting instinct in me.” She muttered to herself. She replaced the arrow in a small quiver that she carried on her hip and then reached over to the bike’s controls and pressed down hard on the large blue-green button.
The engine immediately shut off, replaced by the quiet pinging of cooling metal and she regarded the dead Twillian. She patted the body on its broad back and then sighed. “Why are your kind so obsessed with us?” She hefted the giant body easily, lofting it into a fireman’s carry and walked easily around the house and laid it down into the firepit that she had prepared.
She arranged the rapidly stiffening body into a curled ball and then dropped a tube of something atop it. She backed away slowly, raising one hand to cover her face. As she did so the tube and body burst into an intense blue flame. Within moments the entire corpse was enveloped and melting. In moments more it was entirely gone.
“Now for that bike. I always wanted one.”

 
Chapter 6 – Epilogue
Aboard Kranth’s cruiser, Lash flickered his tongue out as he stared into the comms unit he held up to his snout.
“As I said he would come was it not so? Friend Landry?” Lash rolled his neck as he spoke. “Did he die slowly? He should have.” Lash’s nostrils quivered delicately as he continued speaking into the device.
“It is done. Your freedom is won. Let Franthius know that I shall remember and I owe him one.” The image on the screen was of a diminutive human female in a soiled blue postmistresses’ uniform. She looked both sad and fierce as she spoke. “That’s the seventh hunter that the guild has sent. The next one that they send, I shall not treat so well. I am building a grudge. Tell them that.” The communicator winked off and Lash reached for the ships controls eagerly. He was free.