Ice Flue Chapter 8

Above ground was an endless desert, except for some bone-shaped skyscrapers blending with glittering ice castles in the far distance.

There were no other recruits besides Stan and the police officer.

“Get down and DON’T give me a 1,000. We’re gonna make you rebel and we’re gonna make you like it!” Dayglo Arnie roared, lifting belts from the sands and strapping Stan and the police officer down so that it was impossible to do a single push-up even if they’d chosen not to rebel.

The two ferocious suns beat down from overhead as Stan coughed from the sand he inhaled. As Dayglo Arnie began to lecture about the importance of rebellion at all costs, Stan’s attention drifted to the faraway town of bone-shaped skyscrapers and glittering ice castles.

“Don’t look over there. You are forbidden to visit the Time of the Ice Princesses,” the police officer said, lipstick blurring into mustache while smirking.

One of the ice princesses floated across the desert as fast as an arrow. Her lips were grotesque as her jaw spread inhumanly wide as she smiled and rocket back and forth as if her face were a villainous mask in a Noh theater production. “Take the Ice Flue to Elizabeth Dracula. Only then can you bridge the gap to the Time of the Ice Princesses. Go back to discover the ice flue again. Go back.”

The Ice Flue droplets had changed from blue to red on Stan’s hand.

Dayglo Arnie, red in the face, continued to berate the police officer for its lack of motivation in rebellion. But, due to the altered state of the Ice Flue, Stan faded from existence as Dayglo Arnie and the police officer looked on in dumbfounded slow motion.

Stan’s surroundings elapsed and blurred, his vision a throbbing tunnel, as he was pushed back to a surface, a cold dark cave surface that gradually revealed itself as his laboratory. He held an unspilled vial of blue Ice Flue as a magic trick had been reversed.