Ice Flue Chapter 9

The laboratory was cold and dark; jagged shadows of the experimental disease machinery were cast from the pale moonlight.

A light in the laboratory desk station next to Stan’s turned on. With enormous pilot goggles obscuring her face, she went immediately to work on a glowing orange and serum. After about five minutes of adding and subtracting chemicals, her serum exploded and burned to a dark crisp. “Damn!” She raised her goggles. It was unmistakably the beautiful but terrifying face of Elizabeth Dracula.

Stan recoiled in horror. “Elizabeth—“

“Cheryl, actually.” She extend a long, thin hand, the Elizabeth snake rings intact with raised unusual jewels from the Zebra Fire Mines of Zantra. “I just started here yesterday, although my main interest is in politics. I’d like to be queen someday.” She blushed. “Arrogant, aren’t I? I haven’t even asked your name yet and here I am spouting off about my pipe dreams.” Her tone became series as the green in her eyes sent a chill through Stan. “I just want to state here and now that I do believe in the Time of the Ice Princesses with all my heart.”

Daylgo Arnie’s menacing and sweaty clown face appeared on the day screen at the front of the laboratory. “Okay grunts! Who’s ready to rebel against the system? Now don’t get down and give me—“ The screen was flipped off. Cheryl stood beside the screen, her puckered lips crumpled like a starfish’s legs as she raised a thin finger to them. Nobody had ever rebelled against rebelling in Stan’s presence. Nobody contradicted the revelations of Dayglo Arnie. Nobody.

Cheryl walked down the aisle, the green of her eyes flaking to blue as she stared hypnotically beyond Stan’s soul. “We’ve been at it all night and you haven’t even asked me out for a drink. Wanna play hooky?” Cheryl smiled, the ghosts of recently consumed silver cockroaches burning into muted fireworks displays. “I’m sick of all this rebellion. Let’s try a different approach. Have you ever been hurt by submitting? No? But it’s the most delicious hurt there is. I don’t even care if a religious disease burns me from the inside out. Get on the back of motorcycle, Stan Lunch, and hold me tight. Hold me like I’m your last breath of fresh air. Breathe me like a breath of ice.”

She ran her fingers through Stan’s hair, but the excitement made him clench up. He raised a shaking hand: he’d burst another vial of Ice Flue. The blue liquid dripped down his wrist like a precious wasted drug. His eyes blurred as he went cross-eyed until he could only see the glowing green skull of Elizabeth Dracula cackling as she gunned her motorcycle and aimed it straight past his soul.