Queen of the Arena

by | Oct 10, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer

The Queen came out of the entrance on the far side of the arena floor like some sort of ravenous stick figure scarecrow on stilts, her blind deathtrap of a mouth slavering thick deadly mucous. Her muzzle snuffled the air obscenely from underneath the rock hard carapace of her massive head as acid like hair gel dripped down and lubricated her jaws. It hung off of her in playful long wet strands. They flailed in the wind and sizzled in the dirt where they landed. Her second set of jaws lanced out, stretching in the dazzling sun. Her four arms clutched at the air like dancers as her giant misshapen top-heavy body found balance and settled back into a squat on her huge back legs. Her thick long serrated tail whipped around and stabbed impatiently at the walls. The spear shaped one-ton shovel head on the end of it lashed the dirt, sending fantails of soil up against the safety screens of the front row to their delight. The stalks on her back tasted the air for prey. They soaked up cubic miles of surrounding scent. They blasted out long chemical scent paragraphs in response to what they smelled but no one ever understood those paragraphs.

No one ever understood because she was one of a kind.

She was three stories tall, six tons wide, and a dyed-in-the-wool intelligent killer. Would have been top of the food chain if she wasn’t a sterile albino. She had gestated inside the body cavity of some subterranean pigment-free mammal that was like a polar wolverine. She’d turned out infertile and had eaten nearly every other living thing on the planet she was from. She’d been in a lot of fights and was nearly insane with the need to have children but unable to do so. She was a queen of an empty kingdom. She was a queen without subjects.

Until now.

The white carapace on her head was emblazoned with garish squared off logos from Skemtex, 3M, Macinsoft, Coke and Sheen. Other logos took up space on her long white arms and thick white legs. Like a living billboard of death, she paced around the perimeter of the arena underneath the energy screen, ravenous for the flesh of the crowd. Every morning, they’d shock her to sleep in her room and take the next batch of eggs that she’d spent the night trying to nuzzle into sudden life. Every single one of them held sterile barren slime. Her screams echoed down the corridors, haunting them.

But here in the sun she had no need to restrain her rage.

She triumphed over whatever they found to put in the arena with her. The cloned Tyrannosaurus Rex just pissed on the ground when the lights came up and offered the queen his throat in a pathetic wolfish display of non violent submission. The queen was only too happy to tear his car-sized head off with a staccato four beat swipe of her claws.

Lions, tigers and bears. Armoured cats. Beasts from other planets. Even other Queens. Just the fact of their fertility seemed to send the White Queen into a rage that had no equal or end until the other Queen lay in pieces scattered around the ring. Her ferocity and cunning had outdone them all. She played with them before the kill. She was always fun to watch. She was exhibition only. She was a never fail warm up act for the events that people bet on.

She was alone in the universe. She was the best at what she did. She was a captive. She couldn’t have children. She was angry all the time.

They set three Black Queens on her once. After the White Queen had killed them all in the most exciting half hour metrovision had ever seen, she’d thrown herself screaming against the energy screens until she shorted out one of the quadrants and launched herself into the fleeing crowd. She took out sixty eight people before they shocked her to sleep. The owners didn’t try that stunt again.

Someone had hung a gold star on the thick acid proof door of her lair under the arena. This was her home.

She padded silently tiger like around the arena, baring her crystal teeth, waiting for the other door to open.

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Army of Me

by | Oct 6, 2006 | Story | 0 comments

Author : Duncan Shields, Featured Writer

They’re in a line. Clones of me. Hairless and floating. Huge white numbers painted in nail polish on the cheap plastic tanks. They all float in blue mouthwash with half open eyes. There are white plastic umbilicals attached to their faces and crotches. There are weeds in this underground storage center, snuffling through the concrete walls and ceiling. It’s damp. The light stutters. It’s been abandoned.

A couple of tanks are dark and the liquid has gone a murky black. One near the end is cracked and empty except for a pile of rotting meat and bones at the bottom that colour the whole small bunker with a putrid swampy stink.

Fifteen are left with vital signs that look viable.

My thick boots make loud noises on the metal walkway. The silence down here is only broken by the fridge-like hum of the stasis containers. It’s quite creepy. The darkness would be total if the lights went out.

I found the technical PhD that was supposed to be guarding this place in a bar in Compton. He was a drunk who’d figured out a way to trick the systems into an orderly routine that would fool head office into believing that he was clocking in and out. His facility was stateside and small so it wasn’t monitored too closely. He hadn’t been there in months.

I ran into him in his usual hang out and struck up a conversation. We had some drinks together. We went back to his place after the bar closed and while he was rolling a joint, I jumped him and cut off his hands. Fucking idiot. He’d been guarding those clones for years and didn’t even see the resemblance. He lost consciousness quickly and bled out a few minutes later. I torched his place and left town.

I took his finger out of my jacket pocket and his eye out of the cooled medical locket I had around my neck. I put them in the right places. The computer read his retina and fingerprints. It was an old machine. I held my breath.

Pause.

Click.

I was in. I opened up the links. There was a hissing of steam and a gushing. The humidity increased and fifteen pairs of eyes opened in a panic. The locks cracked and the coffins slid up and open. The blue fluid gushed over the lips of the of the containers and pounded down through the now open grates on the bottom.

Fifteen pairs of hands reached up spastically and yanked at the face huggers that had been feeding them nutrients as they slept. Fifteen weak Kevins fell forward and fifteen pairs of hands dominoed onto the cold floor grating and shivered as their muscles adapted to the sudden gravity. Warm bags of flesh hit the cold metal grating. They slap the walkway. Have you ever let the water drain out of the tub without getting out? You feel like you weigh five hundred pounds. Everyone out of the pool.

One by one, they find me and focus on me with questioning eyes.

This is the third center I’ve hit.

There are almost sixty of me now.

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