She Was Only A Clown Chapter 43

SHE WAS ONLY A CLOWN is a special serialized novella presented in weekly installments every Saturday. Click here to read chapter 1, click here to read chapter 2, click here to read chapter 3, click here to read chapter 4, click here to read chapter 5, click here to read chapters 6 an 7, click here to read chapters 8 and 9, click here to read chapters 10 and 11, click here to read chapters 12 thru 14, click here to read chapters 15 and 16, click here to read chapters 17 and 18, click here to read chapters 19 thru 21, click here to read chapters 22 and 23, click here to read chapters 24 and 25, click here to read chapters 26 and 27, click here to read chapters 28 and 29, click here to read chapters 30 thru 32, click here to read chapters 33 and 34, click hereto read chapter 35, click here to read chapter 36, click here to read chapter 37, click hereto read chapter 38, click here to read chapter 39, click here to read chapter 40, click here to read chapter 41 and click here to read chapter 42. 


Chapter 43

When Kiana came to, she knew only pain and confusion. The world was red. She was suffocating. She tried to scream but only bubbles emerged.

Water. Under water.

She tried to swim free but slammed her face and hands on some kind of surface. Ice? Glass? She was trapped. She could only see vague shapes and shadows above her. She was going to drown. She was going to die.

Elwood!” She screamed out in a final desperate gasp before succumbing to the pressure in her chest and taking a deep, suicidal breath of water.

Only she did not die.

She simply breathed.

What the fuck,” she said aloud. Her voice seemed distant and echoy. Exactly as though she was hearing it underwater. Which, she realized, she was.

And yet she lived.

The fluid in her mouth and lungs didn’t taste like water. It tasted acrid, of chemicals.

Her panic, only barely subsided, returned when she realized just how small a space she was actually in. Her shoulders bumped some obstacle on both sides as she tried to turn over. Her feet touched the bottom, her head the top of whatever container in which she’d found herself trapped.

Elwood!” she screamed again, pounding her fists against the iridescent barrier directly in front of her. This time she swore she heard a response among those vague shapes and shadows outside of her entrapment.

Listen to me carefully,” a muffled voice said. Elwood. He was here. He hadn’t left her.

I’m listening!” she yelled. “Get me outta here!”

I can’t,” the distant voice said. “Only you can. Listen to me. Your consciousness is trapped inside the body that the alien stored it in. You have to will yourself out. Just like I taught you in the mind-storm. Do you understand?”

Kiana tried to do as she was told but her panic and claustrophobia was just too much. “It’s different this time! That was… that was like a dream! This feels so… REAL!”

That’s because it is real,” the voice that she was sure belonged to Elwood said. “I need you to close your eyes. I need you to concentrate. Breathe. Long deep breaths. Focus.”

She did as she was told, difficult as it was. Her heart hammered in her chest for another minute as she steadied her breathing. Then, unbelievable a tense calm came over her.

Ok,” she said after a time. “I’m focused!”

Alright. I need you to think of the happiest moment of your life. I’m not talking about killing, sexual gratification. Not the weird shit. I want you to think back. What is the happiest pure memory in your head?”

Kiana thought. There had been very little happiness in her life, ever. The only happiness she’d ever felt had been when she’d wielded a weapon to take someone’s life, or a cock to milk a hot sticky orgasm out of.

Then she remembered the puppy. It hadn’t lived long and yes, it died a horrible death at the hands of one of her junkie mother’s boyfriends. But there was that moment. That memory. The day she’d come home from school and instead of finding her mother passed out naked covered in some guy’s cum and cigarette ashes, she’d found her mom lucid, sober and holding a little Boston Terrier puppy in her arms.

Kiana had squealed in disbelief. “Is he mine? Is he mine?”

Yeah,” her mom said, hacking and coughing. “Somebody kicked him out of their car at the methadone clinic and I scooped him up before one of those druggy monsters at the shelter could get their hands on him.” As though she wasn’t one of those druggy monsters herself…

The puppy had leaped into Kiana’s arms and smothered her with kisses. “Can I name him??”

Of course,” her mom said laughing. It’s one of the only times Kiana could remember her mom laughing with her instead of at her.

I’ll call him…. BILLY!”

Billy it is!” her mom had said, before getting up and slowly making her way into the apartment. Which meant her mother was going to get a fix and pass out. Which probably meant Kiana wouldn’t get a hot meal for dinner that night.

But that didn’t matter to Kiana in that moment, because for the first time in her life, Kiana felt like she wasn’t utterly alone. She had a friend. A partner. Someone to get her though the long lonely nights and wake her up on the mornings her mom never came home from the bar.

Billy the puppy.

The happiest memory Kiana had.

Everything went white and an intense pressure caused her ears to pop as Kiana felt herself rising up out of the confined space. She gasped for breath and blinked her eyes trying to orient herself to having escaped the extreme conditions of the moment prior.

You’re ok. You’re ok. Look, you’re fine. You don’t have to do that.”

Definitely Elwood’s voice. He was right. She kept trying to breathe, not realizing that the effort was in vain. No air came into her lungs because her lungs didn’t exist. She was an astral projection again.

She opened her eyes and stared into the face of the man who’d saved her life twice now. Maybe three times if she counted the mind-storm incident. It was Elwood alright. Only he didn’t actually look anything like she remembered him from her nightmare prison. He’d been meek and dumpy with crappy hair. Overweight and sweaty.

What stood before her now was something else entirely. His soul, she decided. His pure essence. The Elwood before her was tall and lithe with bulging muscles, not too big but defined. He was shirtless and glowed a pleasant yellow, like the radiance from the sun on a warm spring afternoon. His hair was short but thick and spikey. His facial features were more defined. A broader chin, higher cheek bones. His eyes were wider apart and no longer contained a hint of fear.

Saved me again,” she said sheepishly, casting her gaze downward.

And then she recoiled in horror at what she saw. There, floating in what looked like pink puke was a hairless, dwarf-sized being with pasty white skin, tiny black eyes, and Kiana’s face.

WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT!” she screamed, diving into Elwood’s arms.

He laughed, but did not let her go. “That’s you. At least, that’s where it stored your consciousness. Look around.”

Kiana realized she hadn’t done that yet. She’d been so mesmerized by Elwood’s handsome new body, she’d failed to take into account any of her current surroundings.

Her jaw dropped as she strained her neck to see the unfathomably cyclopean chamber around her. The red she’d seen inside the tiny compartment emanated from phosphorescent walls, ceilings and floors that spanned hundreds, no thousands of feet in all directions, ending only when the cavernous halls took sharp turns, hills or valleys, disappearing into themselves.

Every single surface was covered in those tiny chambers containing the same hideous little creatures that Elwood claimed housed Kiana’s mind. The place reminded Kiana of both the interior of veins she’d seen on the medical procedure channel and also a honey comb or ant colony.

She remembered a nature show about bees feeding their larvae that reminded her exactly of her weird surroundings. Wherever they were, it was the most alien place she’d ever imagined. And she wanted out.

She began to panic. Her breathing became shallow (no matter how many times she reminded herself she didn’t have to, she still breathed) and she tried to pull away from Elwood, whining and whimpering, jamming her eyes shut so those hideous little monsters with their black beady eyes wouldn’t stare at her.

Relax,” Elwood said. His voice soothing even as his hands gripped her arms tighter.

She buried her head in his thick, hairless chest. She kept her eyes closed. “I keep thinking today can’t get any stranger and every time I wake up, this place fucks my ass that much harder. And not a good butt fucking either.”

Elwood laughed, but Kiana felt his cock twitch at her dirty joke. She mashed her tits against him, making them subtly larger again after remembering the technique he’d taught her in the psychic storm.

Her anxiety about standing in an alien larvae farm diminished as she thought about Elwood’s dick. She let her hands run over his rock-hard chest as she pulled back to look up into his face.

We’re standing in one of its tendrils,” Elwood said, gazing around at the larvae pods. “Every one of them is full like this. Billions, maybe trillions of minds are trapped inside here. It possesses all of their accumulated knowledge. Imagine knowing that much about the universe. Imagine—”

Kiana stood on the tips of her toes and kissed him, cutting off his boring rant about whatever the fuck.

Elwood stiffened and pulled away, pushing Kiana’s shoulders back. His face was full of stunned surprise.

What’s’matter? Don’t wanna fuck me?” Kiana asked, pouting.

I— I’ve never…” Elwood stammered. His new hard body and handsome face betrayed him. He momentarily flickered back into the schluby creep from the outside world.

You’ve never banged a chick before?” Kiana said, smirking. She tried to contain a snicker but only managed to turn it into a snort. “You’re kidding me, right?”

Elwood’s new form returned. “No,” he said, smiling, his confidence returned. “I’ve never even kissed one. Fuck, I thought I was gay but I’ve never gotta a boner from a guy either.”

Kiana looked down. “Well you’ve got one now. Not much of one, but it seems happy.”

I didn’t think to—” Elwood said, his confidence again deflating at Kiana’s remark about his size.

That’s ok, baby. I work with what I’ve got.” With that, Kiana dropped to her knees and took Elwood not-so-significant length into her mouth. She took him head to root in one motion, burying her nose against his smooth belly, forcing his small member as far into her throat as she could get it, which wasn’t very.

She extracted him, stroking the soaking wet member, a slight frown on her face. “I’m gonna have to try to get the cock and balls in my mouth at the same time, sugar, if this is gonna be any fun for me.” She deep-throated him again, but pulled him out as an afterthought. “No offense,” she added, before going back to work, easily cramming both of his testicles into her mouth along with his small penis.

Elwood grunted. His hands wound into Kiana’s hair. Her insults seemed to make him even more aroused which is what’d she’d been hoping for. She’d seen a look in his eye that betrayed his knight-in-shining-armor demeanor.

The gratitude she’d felt only moments before melted away. Kiana’s dark thoughts returned. The comforting thoughts. The only thoughts that had gotten her through her awful childhood and teenage years.

Fuck this motherfucker. She was no damsel in distress and she damn well didn’t need any white-knighting from a stranger. She’d dealt with plenty of those in real life, always thinking they could swoop in and make her life better. None of them realized, or at least none of them realized before it was too late and she’d ruined their lives along with hers, that some people simply enjoy being miserable.

Elwood gritted his teeth and began to fuck Kiana’s face with vigor.

That’s right. That’s what she’d wanted. The back of her throat was already beginning to throb from the force of his little cockhead ramming against it. A few more minutes of this and she’d be talking like a fifty year old chain smoking granny for the rest of the day.

But that’s when Elwood’s cock got bigger. Much bigger.

Kiana knew something was off when both of his balls popped out of her mouth. She’d felt dudes’ balls get bigger right before they came before, but nothing like that. Then she felt the sides of her lips stretch out as Elwood’s meat widened. A moment later and her eyes were streaming with water as his cock lengthened to the point that Kiana had to take in quick breaths from her nose as he pulled out because her throat was so engulfed with fat dick.

Elwood laughed as she struggled and gagged at his newly formed manhood.

He must have lengthened himself to 12 inches, maybe more. Kiana fought to pull away, but Elwood’s grip on her head remained fast. She was sure he was going to gag-fuck her to death when suddenly he pulled out and ejaculated all over her forehead, eyes and nose, heaving in satisfaction as he stepped away, leaving her covered in his spunk.

Kiana grinned, wiping it all away with her fingers, then sucking it off and swallowing it like ice cream. “Wanna warn me next time you’re gonna grow a huge cock in the middle of a blowjob?”

“Sorry, I… got carried away. I didn’t realize it was gonna feel so…”

“Now you know why I’m such a fuckin’ nympho psycho killer bitch, huh?” Kiana finished cleaning her face off and stood. “Kinda hot being watched by all these weird ass fetus people, too. I never mind an audience…”

Elwood regained his composure. “We can’t mess around. The entity will eventually locate us here. It has several parts of my mind trapped. It will be able to torture our location out of them, given enough time.”

Kiana ignored his boring talking. She’d gotten a taste of what he had to offer and she wasn’t about to let him off the hook for jizzing on her face without getting her off first.

Blah, blah, blah. Fuck this alien motherfucker.” She sprang forward, knocking Elwood onto his back. “Let it grow a dick and watch. I ain’t done with you yet, virgin boy. I’m gonna pop your cherry right on top of all these little pig-fetus looking bodies and you’re gonna fuckin’ like it.”

She shoved his still erect dong into herself, concentrating on making her vaginal walls constrict as much as possible around his flesh.

Now,” she said, smiling wide, looking into his eyes. “Just how big can you make this thing?”

***

Check back next Saturday for chapter 44!

She Was Only A Clown Chapter 42

SHE WAS ONLY A CLOWN is a special serialized novella presented in weekly installments every Saturday. Click here to read chapter 1, click here to read chapter 2, click here to read chapter 3, click here to read chapter 4, click here to read chapter 5, click here to read chapters 6 an 7, click here to read chapters 8 and 9, click here to read chapters 10 and 11, click here to read chapters 12 thru 14, click here to read chapters 15 and 16, click here to read chapters 17 and 18, click here to read chapters 19 thru 21, click here to read chapters 22 and 23, click here to read chapters 24 and 25, click here to read chapters 26 and 27, click here to read chapters 28 and 29, click here to read chapters 30 thru 32, click here to read chapters 33 and 34, click hereto read chapter 35, click here to read chapter 36, click here to read chapter 37, click here to read chapter 38, click here to read chapter 39, click here to read chapter 40 and click here to read chapter 41. 


Chapter 42

The robot 91765 had come from humble beginnings. He was birthed in a small industrial vat in one of Thalos Prime’s poor southern districts. The robots there lived in abject poverty, only earning enough pay producing crude oil barrels for the galactic army’s war machines to live in small shacks littering the hillside of a vast solar panel valley.

Being that they were synthetic organisms, born of oil and steel, the robots on Thalos prime did not have parents or families per se. Instead, the newly constructed beings were assigned older units with considerably more CPU cycles on their brain-boards to lead them through the first few years of their machine servitude.

91765’s group of new robots had been assigned an aging bot several generations out of date, more fit for the scrap pile than production line named RS-507A. But what RS lacked in cutting-edge technology, he made up for in ingenuity and cunning.

RS-507A was part of a small group of resistance bots who longed to be out from under the draconian rule of Thalos Rictorian and his hell army. And so it went, 91765, though sheer luck of mentor assignment, was initiated into the robot rebellion and quickly rose amongst its ranks after showing an utterly unyielding knack for violence and military-like strategy.

Before 91765’s third solar cycle, RS-507A, 91765 and the resistance had totally cleared their district of sentry bots connected to the Thalos Prime surveillance nexus. Within another solar cycle, all southern districts on Thalos Prime had a strong resistence force among their labor ranks.

Thalos himself was so pre-occupied with the galactic war he was waging against the rest of the universe, he wasn’t able to stop the rebellion on his home planet before it had taken root and become a formidable army in its own right.

Six solar cycles into his existence, 91765 became the official leader of the resistence after leading a charge against a northern district so heavily fortified, it was thought to be a total suicide mission to try to seize it. But seize it 917 did, and handily using the kind of guerrilla warfare tactics not seen on Thalos Prime since the days of the flesh people. 917 simply did not formulate or execute his battle strategies in a way that any of Thalos’s automated sentry machines’s prediction models could anticipate.

And so, with all of the south and an important strategic hold on the north, the resistance christened 91765 their supreme royal commander. And with that honor bestowed upon him, 91765 had official battle insignia created for the army, naming his fighting force The Metal Battalion and officially announcing war on Thalos Rictorian.

The Metal Battalion’s stronghold was constructed in their northern district. From this position, 91765 and his rebel soldiers fended off countless attacks from Thalos, who had returned to his home planet intent on destroying the resistance and bringing control back to Thalos Prime.

This horrific war raged for more than three centuries with Thalos slowly and brutally taking back large swaths of the southern districts. Both 91765 and Thalos fought at the front lines of their armies, felling thousands of enemy robots with their own hands. But it wasn’t until that fateful day that Elwood witnessed inside the Metal Battalion stronghold that 91765 and Thalos met face to face.

***

The doors to the science lab exploded as a hulking robot, clearly designed as a bunker busting battering ram smashed through. His enormous, wide flat head with menacing eyes on either side reminded Elwood of a hammerhead shark as he surged into the room, smoke and shrapnel following him.

Stepping over the pulverized doors, a nightmare entered the room.

Thalos, even though he’d now been completely cybernetic for thousands of years, had kept his human features on his robot body, only… Enhanced.

His hair which had stood tall, thick, black and wild in life, now consisted of three, foot-long rows of black spikes, like robotic mohawks. His face was all blue metal and thick rivets, his eyes two tiny black smudges and the rest was nothing but beard made of the same kind of porcupine quill-like spikes that jutted from his head.

Even his huge brown trench coat was made of thinner overlapping sections of metal alloy. Scores of weapons, hoses and wires running various fluids and electronic data seemed to hover around Thalos like a cloud of noxious fumes. Indeed, in addition to a regular sized army’s arsenal of heavy firepower, several steam pipes extended from his back which added a thick acrid smoke to the already cloudy room.

What happened next happened fast. So fast, it seemed to Elwood that a meeting as epic as 91765 and Thalos finally squaring off deserved a much more dramatic climax than what it got. But he also knew full well what had been birthed in that room there that day on Thalos Prime. And there was nothing more epic nor dramatic in the entire universe than the evil which had been brought to life on that stainless steel operating table.

Thalos wasted no time. Before the smoke and dust had settled, he unleashed a torrent of melter blasts toward 917 and the undulating blob of flesh. A set of four honor guards tasked with protecting Thalos’s flanks stepped through the blasted doors and joined their pirate lord, laying even more blaster bolts toward 917 and his organic abomination.

The honor guards looked only slightly less menacing than Thalos himself. They were covered in massive steel plates adorned with all sorts of knives and swords across their shoulder pads, with a single spine of spiked mowhawks across their otherwise bald metal scalps.

Bring me the heretic dead or alive,” Thalos screamed in a gravely, digitized voice procured from recordings of his former human speech patterns. “But burn every last piece of that living flesh or it will never die!”

917 activated a small force field around his body, temporarily protecting him from the majority of the melter blasts directed at him. 417 was not as lucky. His body had already been partly absorbed by the fleshy creation which now towered over the table almost to the ceiling, causing the table to buckle under its weight.

Most of 417’s internal parts had already been sucked into the flesh, but enough of his consciousness remained inside his body to scream out in horrible pain when the melter blasts and bolts slammed into his torso and legs.

As 417 died and was simultaneously absorbed by the ever growing flesh mound, Elwood mused that the robot had really gotten a bad break that day. 417 wasn’t a part of 917’s royal guard or even part of his paramilitary revolution. 417 and his spider-bot companion were simply low-level technicians who worked in the data-fields inside the Metal Battalion stronghold.

Earlier that day, after Thalo’s forces had pinned 917 and his mercenaries in at their northern district compound, most of 917’s forces had been decimated in a brilliant pincer attack which found them occupying all of their firepower on Thalo’s forward force, while Thalos and a small group of heavily armed guardsmen had come up and over the top of the stronghold, bypassing its defensive shield and killing its sentries where they stood.

917 himself had barely escaped into the building where he was immediately pursued by Thalo’s entire army. Only 917 and 417 had managed to flee into the medical lab and bar the doors at the last possible second with Thalos quickly at their rear.

417 died in agony, having never so much as picked up a blaster rifle.

Elwood’s musings were silenced as the final crescendo of the entity’s vision began to play out in front of his astral eyes.

Stop firing at the traitor,” Thalos said, rushing toward the alien monster now large enough to touch the floor and the ceiling of its own accord. “Destroy the flesh! We will all die if it escapes!”

Thalos was well aware of the implications of 917’s creation, in part because 917 had hijacked and confiscated Thalo’s own occult experiments with living flesh that he’d secretly initiated here in this very facility centuries before.

Even while destroying all organic life on his planet, Thalos had remained obsessed with creating organic life of his own to harness as powerful weapons technology against his enemies.

It was only after 917’s Metal Battalion forces seized control of the northern district stronghold that 917 himself began to research, study, and eventually obsess over the occult rituals and scientific experiments being run there.

The rebel leader had spent untold fortunes to procure the small mound of flesh he’d run into the medical lab with when Elwood had first appeared. It had been through the hands of countless shamen, wizards and warlocks each anointing the flesh with their own ritualistic runes and incantations, readying it for 917’s final experiment. He had only received the flesh from off-planet mere hours before Thalos set upon the stronghold. Had the shipment arrived only a few hours later, all of 917s obsessions and efforts would have been futile.

As it turned out, the universe had another fate in store for his creation…

***

917’s shields had stopped the majority of the heavy weapons fire, but such powerful weapons fired at such close range could not be completely stopped by even the royal robot’s sophisticated shield technology. He was badly damaged. Fluids leaked from his torso where he’d taken a nearly direct hit from a bolter. Smoke escaped dozens of other places on his exo-frame and most of the arms on his right side were totally useless after being fused together from Thalo’s melter fire.

But he remained alert and functioning enough to produce a small circuit board from under his robes. “This circuit stick contains all of the collected memories of all of the organic people you slaughtered here on Thalos prime. Or,” 917 cocked his head in his best imitation of a robotic smirk. “Eden Prime, I should say. Combined with my memories, my creation shall have the knowledge of a thousand generations. It will be the most powerful mind in the universe! It will—”

That’s all 917 was able to get out before the flesh mound’s tendril pierced his damaged body from behind and sucked his essence into itself.

917’s body turned inside out, like a vacuum had turned on inside of him. His crumpled shell fell to the floor as the flesh mound rose up, defying gravity. It levitated above the stainless steel tables as the center of its mass peeled back. A great orange eye opened and gazed at Thalos and his hellforged robot army for the first time.

The Entity was born.

Concentrate your fire at the front of the hide!” Thalos screamed.

But it was futile, every bolt and every melter blast that managed to open a wound on the Entity’s skin healed just as quickly as they opened. The monstrous force was already too powerful to kill.

Thalos, however, had one last trick up his sleeve. He hadn’t ruled the galaxy for ten thousand years from sheer stubbornness alone. He was a shrewd fighter, born on the high, atomic winds of outer space and bred to kill.

I need a five second window! Lock your weapons on the target I’m shooting right now!”

All of Thalos’s guns shot the same spot just below the Entity’s eye, keeping a small area on its thick hide open. His robots did the same, opening the spot wider and wider as Thalos surged forward, unclipping a specialized grenade from his metalic trench coat.

Elwood knew what the weapon was because the Entity knew. Thalos had specifically designed a grenade while on his warship on his way to Thalos Prime. He’d known 917 was experimenting with his dark matter theories. He’d anticipated that he would arrive on planet and meet a monstrosity just like this.

And so he’d created this particular grenade with an anti-matter shielding that would prevent it from being absorbed by the Entity’s flesh.

Another two steps and Thalos launched the grenade at the Entity’s body. And it landed inside! But at great cost. Before Thalos could initiate the trigger mechanism in his hand and blow up the cursed flesh monster in front of him, a tendril wrapped around his arm and pulled him against the Entity’s body.

Thalos’s essence was ripped from his ten thousand year old robot body in a split second, leaving nothing but burned out circuitry before his hell-bots were able to save him.

Now the Entity not only possessed the collective mind of Eden Prime, 917 and all of his occult and scientific knowledge, but now the memories and essence of the most dreaded space pirate to ever live.

And that’s when the Entity turned its eye on Elwood.

You do not belong here,” it said, grinding the memory to a stop. Time stood still. Thalos’s troops froze in place even as they were massacred by dozens and dozens of the Entity’s tendrils. With their leader dead and the Entity growing in power by the micro second, they stood no chance. Wheat for the chaff.

Elwood knew this because the Entity knew this. He already knew how the rest of the memory played out. He knew the stronghold would fall in moments as the Entity outgrew the compound’s walls. Knew Thalos Prime itself would fall in a matter of weeks as the Entity entered the upper atmosphere and began to use the robot inhabitants to inflict mass hysteria on the population. Thalos Prime, Eden Prime, the first planet to fall to the alien monstrosity’s predatory might.

I know how to kill you,” Elwood said, smiling. “I’ve seen your weakness. I will be your death.”

The Entity’s tendril’s whipped through Elwood’s celestial being, drawing it into the semi-corporal world of the dreamscape. Fresh pain surged through Elwood’s body as the Entity absorbed his essence.

You can’t stop me,” Elwood said through grinding teeth. “I’m not here.”

But you are,” the Entity responded, floating closer to Elwood, passing through the frozen bodies of Thalos’s honor guard. “You are here with me as long as I want you here. I can prolong this memory for eternity. You are powerless to leave.”

You… can keep this… part of me,” Elwood said as his limbs melted away and his face began to sag and pull toward the great alien in front of him.

But I’m already inside your mind,” Elwood still smiled even though his mouth was no longer attached to his body.

The Entity’s eye grew wide in disbelief.

And I know where the bomb is.”

***

Check back next Saturday for chapter 43!

She Was Only A Clown Chapter 40

SHE WAS ONLY A CLOWN is a special serialized novella presented in weekly installments every Saturday. Click here to read chapter 1, click here to read chapter 2, click here to read chapter 3, click here to read chapter 4, click here to read chapter 5, click here to read chapters 6 an 7, click here to read chapters 8 and 9, click here to read chapters 10 and 11, click here to read chapters 12 thru 14, click here to read chapters 15 and 16, click here to read chapters 17 and 18, click here to read chapters 19 thru 21, click here to read chapters 22 and 23, click here to read chapters 24 and 25, click here to read chapters 26 and 27, click here to read chapters 28 and 29, click here to read chapters 30 thru 32, click here to read chapters 33 and 34, click hereto read chapter 35, click here to read chapter 36, click here to read chapter 37, click here to read chapter 38 and click here to read chapter 39.


Chapter 40

Elwood slammed his scythe arms into the creatures many mouths, but each time he chopped off a limb, three more grew back in its place until Elwood was complete immobilized by the creature’s slimy tendrils.

The two tumbled through the chaos of the alien entity’s mind as the creature shoved more and more of Elwood’s body into its largest mouth. He was now devoured all the way to his chest.

As a last ditch effort to save himself, Elwood willed himself to catch fire.

The tentacle monster howled in pain and rage as its skin boiled. The flames took on a soft, emerald hue as it burned. But the spots on its flesh that blistered simply turned into new new eyeballs or fangs, not slowing down its consumption of Elwood’s body for even a moment.

After a short time, both of Elwood’s long, sharp arms had been devoured. All that remained of his psychic body was his head and it too was being slowly pushed into the creature’s hideous wet mouth.

Die now, little man. And stay dead forever,” the mouths of the tendrils said as they pushed his head further into its gullet.

Elwood’s thoughts turned to Kiana as his face was pulverized by squishy tongues and razor fangs. She had to make it to the brain if his plan had any chance of working.

A moment later and his consciousness met oblivion as the starfish-shaped beast swallowed the last of his mushed up brain.

***

But when he woke, Elwood was not inside the entity’s mental nexus as he’d planned. He was in a brightly lit room. Sterile. Lined front to back with shelving. Bottles and beakers and canisters and boxes cluttered the shelves, all except one which housed nothing but ancient, crumbling texts. The pages of these books were yellowed and crumbling. Some were held together with rope and other bindings.

And in the center of the room lay several medical tables. They were stainless steel as were the walls, the floor and the ceilings. Everything in the room was made of metal.

Even the bodies on the tables.

Robots. The things on the tables were robots.

Their bodies lay in various states of disrepair. Each of them was a different size and shape with vastly different forms, albeit they were all more or less humanoid in construction.

One lacked a head, its neck wires and cables laying down across its chest. Another was missing arms and legs with jagged, charred pieces of metal jutting out from where its multiple appendages should have been. And so on down the line.

These robots looked as though they’d been damaged in some kind of violent conflict. Elwood admittedly had not ever ventured out of Hopp’s county but even on the internet he’d never seen human-like robots this sophisticated outside of science fiction movies. Was he in some sort of secret military lab? Why had he woken up here and not inside the entity’s brain as he’d intended?

The answer burst through the lab’s double doors.

Lock it! Lock it now! Do not let them inside!”

Two robots rushed inside. The lead robot clutched a large rectangular container to its chest and rushed over to one of the empty medical tables while the other spun around and entered a code into a small numerical panel on the wall, causing a hissing sound as gas escaped from two huge columns of steel which extended from the floor and ceiling, meeting at the middle of the door, presumably sealing it off from whoever the two robots were running from.

The first robot had a head shaped like a hammer. Where its face would have been was large, round and flat. A red light emanated from this circle, subtly changing color when it spoke from speakers in the sides of its head. That head tapered down in the back into a point, giving the head its hammer shape. This robot didn’t have legs. Instead it gained ambulation through a set of two treads, like a tank. Four arms jutted off from its flank, all various different sizes with a multitude of tiny gadgets extending off the end of its limbs where hands would have been on a person, all bound together in a chaotic knot of tubes, wires and cables.

It’s body was draped in ornate robes, but they were tarnished, ripped and covered in oils and fluids of various colors. The robes indicated some kind of royalty or high position in society.

It set the container on the table and manipulated another numerical panel. The panel beeped, causing the robot to curse. It used one of its hand-like instruments to pop the panel loose and zap the circuit board inside, causing the panel to smoke and the locks on either side of the container to release.

What are you doing, 91765! You can’t open that box! Are you insane?!”

The second robot had an entirely different design. This one was round like a barrel and had six pneumatic legs, three on each side which moved it along. It only possessed two arms ending in claws with four grabbing tips on each hand. Its head was wide, egg shaped and flat on top. It had two yellow glowing eyes in the front of its face which gave it a perpetually surprised look, seemingly matching its personality as it flailed around screaming at the first robot for opening the container.

A long tube filled with some kind of glowing fluid extended from its back and attached to a much smaller robot the size of a small dog. This small robot had 8 legs like a spider and four large stalks on the front of its egg shaped body that glowed the same color green at their tips, indicating eyes of some kind.

This spider-bot rode atop the second bot’s wide shoulders, always scuttling, never sitting still.

Relax 41789, by the time they get in here, I’ll be finished,” the first robot, the one named 91765 said. “They can do what they want with me. My creation will be free.” It said this last part in a whisper, reverence heavy in its cadence.

Do what they want with you? I’m in here with you! You never said anything about opening the box! Oh no, oh no, oh no! You fucked me, 917! You fucked me!”

A loud bang rang out as something large smashed into the doors from the outside of the room, accentuating the strange robot’s frantic cries.

41789 scampered over to a set of monitors along the wall to the right of where Elwood stood. Monitors Elwood hadn’t yet noticed in the room. On one screen a mob of robots smashed, scratched and banged against the doors. Elwood was surprised to hear so little of the commotion considering how many robots stood directly outside the laboratory. The walls must have been extremely thick inside. In fact, the bang that had reverberated inside the room had come from a gigantic robot running down the hallway, smashing its enormous bulk into the doors, an act which it performed again as Elwood and 41789 watched the screen.

They’ll be inside any moment! The penalty for possessing organic material on Alpha-Prime-470421A is DEATH!”

If Elwood hadn’t already figured out he was inside another of the entity’s visions by the existence of the ridiculously technologically advanced robots, or that they utterly ignored him as they went about their business, the fact that Elwood did not truly exist in the same space and time as the peculiar robots was solidified when he looked at the second monitor on the wall.

The camera was obviously stationed away from the compound they sat in now, pointed away from its front doors at any who might approach. A megalopolis loomed on the screen. A titanic city, all made of steel, all the denizens zooming around were self-propelled robots.

Not a tree, a patch of grass or even dirt existed from the gate at the front of the compound to the horizon in the distance. Even the moons hanging in the sky, which were many, were made of metal.

Alpha-Prime-470421A was a metal planet. Elwood knew now, of course, because the entity knew. The knowledge of the planet and the beings inhabiting its surface came to Elwood just as effortlessly as everything else he’d learned about the alien being since his consciousness had been sucked up into its body.

But why was he here? Why now? In the next moments, the answers to those questions played out in front of his eyes in all their brutal and violent glory.

Stop your whining and get me the book off the shelf, 417! We don’t have time to waste! If I do this right, we won’t have to worry about those backward thinking bots outside!” 917 turned to his accomplice, his face plate glowing bright. In his hands he held a mound of flesh, slowly pulsing.

Its color, black as night. Every beat emanating a soft green glow.

And then Elwood knew exactly why he was there. Why this moment was so important for him to see. This was its beginning. This was the birth of the entity.

***

Check back next week for chapter 41!