Ice Flue Chapter 19

Chapter 19

At a long table, Stan, the police officer, and Dracun Lizards were strapped to wooden highchairs.

Heiferwaith, wearing a floral print moo moo, carried a steaming silver pot with her hooves. She poured a meager helping in the car dishes in front of all the new recruits.

Leather straps were tied firmly around their chests; they could not reach their steaming helpings of stew which smelled of creamy lobster bisque. Since the bounds were all intricately woven together, whenever one person, or Dracun Lizard, lunged forward the bounds of all the new recruits were pulled tighter.
Dayglo Arnie and Elizabeth Dracula emerged from elevator doors.
Elizabeth wore a short, shoulder-less dress made of frozen bison and human tongues. An enormous gold ring circled around her waist like a belt, a green sparkling emerald covering her groin.
Dayglo Arnie, still wearing pancaked clown makeup, also wore a tuxedo and a pair of ruby red rabbit ears. Every finger glittered with diamond rings and his boots were made from the faces of two live crocodiles.
Arnie and Elizabeth theatrically joined hands and hopped on the table, Arnie sweeping her off her feet and kissing as deeply as a vampire.
Stan fought against his bounds until all the new recruits were choking.
The gasping aroused Arnie’s attention who dropped Elizabeth onto the bowls of lobster bisque. The bowls splashed and rolled and broke against the new recruits as if in slow motion; they lapped up what soaring dribbles they could.
“Rebellion. Ever heard of it? A lot of you have begun the process, but what’s troubling is that you don’t understand that a rebellion HAS RULES.” Arnie stalked around his captive audience, growling and barring Elizabeth-bloody (from their savage kiss) fangs and overturning the remaining soup bowls into their delighted faces. “Today represents a great union between our country’s only two political parties. You’ve toiled long and hard for this opportunity TO REBEL CORRECTLY. Even when you’re hungry, you must learn to rebel against your own body. Even as you live, you must rebel against your own heartbeat. Even as you die, you must rebel against your own death. Why? To prove your loyalty, of course. To who? THAT IS NOT A QUESTION THAT SHOULD EVER SPEW FROM YOUR PUTRID LIPS! To prove MY loyalty, I will be acting as a display case. I offer you ME!” He seethed, sweat pouring down his cheeks from his enraged monologue. “Elizabeth, can you do the honors?”
Elizabeth pulled a rope underneath the table; this removed the bounds of the new recruits.
Stan finally caught his breath. His hand grazed the black velvet table cloth. All the bowls and utensils had been removed.
Dayglo Arnie lay naked on the table, his shelved inner ribcage containing the contents of a well-stocked fridge.
It had been days since they’d eaten. The sense of hunger in the room was almost palpable. Stomachs growled like a chorus of desperate amphibians.
“Resist. Rebel. I know I can trust you. I know you would never eat the contents of your master comrade. We must die starving together to prove our point. This revolution WILL be televised. I will offer you my blood and body as nourishment but YOU WILL REFUSE. Elizabeth, are the feeds still spoiling to the digital galaxy brain?”
“Yes, comrade co-emperor.” Elizabeth’s snake tongue tickled Stan’s chin as cobra heads swam within the emerald on her groin.
But the revolution was not to be. It was hard to say who did it first–obviously, later, the Dracun Lizards would be blamed, although Stan was almost certain Heiferwaith had removed the first steel box of cold cuts–but the contents of Arnie’s fridge chest were soon being devoured with glee.
“No. what are you doing?” Arnie struggled to resist but his fridge body, as if superglued, could not be separated from the black velvet table cloth. “Communists! Fascists! Capitalists! Socialists! Libertarians! Didn’t you listen to any of my 984 recorded gospel lectures which we embedded to your brains at birth? Elizabeth, I’m sad to say the time has come to unleash them from the umbrella of our rebellion.”
Elizabeth pressed a button beneath the table, raising the roof of the spaceship room to reveal a canopy of stars.
Arnie wept. “You’ve failed me, new recruits. You couldn’t even manage to revolt against the wretched needs of your bodies for a single meal. And so now,” Dayglo Arnie continued spreading his arms like a hawk as he separated from the table cloth with a ripping sound and the new recruits floated high above the spaceship before slowing and feeling an intense painful pull downward, “the time has come for us to go to war.”