RUN. Part I

1.

“Run, run, as fast as you can, you can’t escape me, I’m the LottoOddMan!”

The voice that said this was bizarrely high.

Walter Wendt ran for his life through the dark and twisting corridors of the godforsaken Palace of Conquest as LottoOddMan screamed laughter from somewhere behind him. As he laughed, the walls of the corridors abruptly rusted and collapsed. The floor beneath Wendt’s aching feet warped and twisted like a thing alive.

The oxygen in the air of the place seemed to tighten in a way, as if it struggled to remain as far away from the insides of the fleeing man’s lungs as possible.

That was LottoOddMan’s ability; when the chances of a thing happening seemed almost nonexistent, LottoOddMan could increase them, bring them to terrible life.

As he ran, stumbling every now and again as the stitch in his right side now spread burning fingers across his back, Wendt thought, horrorstricken, of what the damage to his body, which had been given to him by a throng of his worst and most insane enemies, could do to him, given time.

With a mere chuckle, LottoOddMan could cause brains to overheat; brains could broil  in their own juices. With a singsong trill, Wendt’s heart could burst. His eyes could implode with a whisper.

In a world filled with half-full cup sensibilities, LottaOddMan might possibly rule supreme one day.

For now, though, torturing the man who had once been the world’s most powerful and effective post-human defender was good enough for him.

Wendt skidded to a halt, jerked his head to the left, then the right, quickly staring down each corridor as his heart threatened to tear itself from his chest. With a start, he chose his path and hurtled down the left corridor, which looked a little too much like a gargantuan and hideous throat.

At the end of the corridor was what looked like a thick, steel door.

At seeing this, Wendt’s determination to escape this, the most hellish nightmare scenario of his career, not to mention his life, increased two-fold. A surge of electrifying energy seemed to careen from his brain, down his neck, through his chest and down into his legs, which began to beat the slithering floors with mad resistance.

He might not be strong enough to open the door, given what had happened to his immense strength, indeed; given what had happened to all of his abilities, but even if he wasn’t strong enough to open the door, he wasn’t going to die on his back like some wild animal that had given up the fight at the very edge of some horrid trap.

He was going to fight until he escaped.

Or until he died.

When he came to the end of the corridor, Wendt slipped to a stop and stared wildly at the steel door in front of him. He grabbed and snatched at the sides of the door, but there was nothing for it. He couldn’t get a grip.

Very close at hand now were LottaOddMan’s screeches of laughter.

The top layer of the door shuddered and peeled away as LottoOddMan sniggered at his cornered prey.

The right side of the door suddenly gave Wendt’s probing and desperate fingers a firm grip. Wendt, shocked into disbelief by his dumb luck, began to pull as LottoOddMan’s voice floated to his ears.

Over his shoulder, Wendt saw his tracker slip around the corner at the far end of the corridor.

“Get ready to eat it, hero,” said LottoOddMan. His voice was thick with disgusting joy.

Wendt pulled as hard as he could on the right side of the door, and although his strength was pretty much gone, the sight of LottoOddMan’s hand unzipping his green and blue chinos, an absolutely foul grin on his face, gave Wendt the determination he needed to pry the door first to a slit, and then to a crack, and then to an actual wedge.

A way out, through which he might just escape into the great and wild severity that was the arctic wilderness.

At the sight of Wendt’s progress with the door, LottoOddMan’s voice stopped taunting, and started screaming.

“F**k! He’s getting away! He’s getting away! Somebody, a speedster or a goddamn teleporter, stop the f**k!”

With a colossal tug, Wendt wrenched the door open, and, screaming with insane triumph, fell into the white wastes of the north.

“Walter, Walter,” chimed a soft and fleeting voice.

Bethany.

What was Bethany doing in the middle of nowhere, freezing to death?

Why was Bethany wearing a two piece bathing suit while the fierce winds of the land threatened to strip the flesh from her bones?

How had he and Bethany gotten into a suite at a Hilton hotel in the middle of Oklahoma?

Now they were kissing.

Now they were groping.

When Bethany’s vagina started to shriek swearwords with fleshy and horribly toothy lips, Wendt began to scream.

“That’s enough, Psyche,” spoke a deep voice.

“It’s never enough,” said a woman’s thick, Russian voice. There was greed in the voice.

“My mind is impenetrable, you b***h, so you can stop with the cerebral search,” said the first voice. “You’ll never find a chink in the armor. You will listen to me, since I lead this little group of ours; it was my idea, after all. When I say enough is enough, it’s enough. Now shut it down.”

Quite suddenly, there was not hotel room for Wendt, no wine or grapes or strawberries chilling in a bowl beside a plush bed.

There was no threatening, gaping vagina.

There was no Bethany.

There was only an exhausted and bloodied man screaming on the floor, rolling back and forth at the base of the door before him.

“Life is but a dream,” said Psyche.

Though there were tears of pain and rage and terror in his eyes, which clouded his vision like a shroud, Wendt stared up from the floor at the group of people standing over him.

He would mark them all.

He would kill every f*****g one of them the instant the got a chance to do so.

But for now, he only marked them through misty eyes.

LottoOddMan, master of awful possibility.

Psyche, mistress of the living mind.

Aloe, the poison touch princess of Madagascar.

Blindside, who could detonate solid matter with a snap of his fingers.

Whiteout. An immense and malevolent hive mind colony of light, housed in the frame of an obese man.

Sideways, who could travel along the personal time lines of his victims.

Shimmer, who could posses and control beasts of every nature.

Slide, who could run faster than the speed of sound.

Network, a teleporter whose favorite pastime was exploding babies in their cribs by shunting himself into them.

Brute, super strong leader of this collection of Wendt’s worst and most dangerous enemies.

Standing at the fore of the group with a grin spread across his dark face.

“It’s over, Wendt,” said Brute. “You’ll never escape the tables of torture.”

Wendt tried to stand, but Psyche’s assault on his mind had left his body totally incapable of movement. At least for now.

“Get used to terror and pain, b***h,” said Brute.

As his worst enemies drew forward and closed ranks around him, Wendt could barely fathom the depths of the next round of dreadfulness.

Reviews

[Ben Umstead]

As I sat being very much entertained, I couldn't help imagine the world you created, accented by the hand of someone like Tony Harris. I've said this before, but I'll say it again, Broadie - You have to write for the funny pages!

[Inda Lauryn]

I'm definitely not posting my sci-fi/fantasy stuff now. I wouldn't want it to have to sit next to yours. As always, you show great imagination and originality. I hope you're considering putting some of these stories in a collection. I'd love to see you published.

[W. Braid Anderson]

This shows one hell of a lot of imagination and inventiveness. The best thing of yours I've read. It gripped me right through. Next thing your byeline will be on the sci-fi comics. Loved every bit of it. I say again, you have a hell of an imagination.
regards
Braid Anderson