SQUAXX CINEMA - March/April Short Story Comp

[Bad City Blue]

Salutations, worthless lumps of munce,

The last short story comp threw up (literally) plenty of diverse and creative entries, so here's a theme suggested by the winner of said comp, The Shark Who is Rather Legendary (or something)

SQUAXX CINEMA

We LOVE 2000AD!

We LOVE movies!

Hey! What is we were to combine our fave movies with our fave 2000AD characters in 500 words or less? That'd be ARSOM!!!!

How you do it is up to you, but please be aware that I have read D.R & Quinch go to Hollywood, so don't try and rip it off, mainly because I'm planning to.

this will run to the end of April, with a 2000AD Graphic Novel to the winner, courtesy of Rebellion (we LOVE Rebellion).

I'm off to plagiarize some Charlton Heston films.

Bad City Bloogie

[Bad City Blue]

Here's a bit of fun to start you off

IT'S A MADHOUSE!

George Taylor's mind was racing. What the hell was happening? He was trapped, trapped in a madhouse of a world light years away from the Earth he'd left behind what was now centuries ago.

Separated from his astronaut colleagues by, of all things, talking apes, he was running for his life. Everywhere he looked he saw apes. Apes in human clothing, apes throwing things at him, apes with, of all things, guns. It was a like a bizarre parallel universe where apes had evolved faster than humans and taken control.

He ducked down an alleyway, pausing for breath, but the respite was brief.
'He's down here! Get him! Came the cry from an ape who was smoking a cigar.
Taylor ran, ran as fast as he could, until fate leant a hand and he tripped. He tumbled over and over, coming to rest dazed and unsteady.

The apes threw a net over him, raising it up, holding him like some kind of... animal. One of them came over, a fierce, unnatural intelligence burning behind it's eyes. It had obviously never seen an astronaut before, and as Taylor swung before it, it poked him with a hairy forefinger, as if to check he was real.

'Take your stinking paws off of me, you damn dirty APE!' yelled Taylor in fear, anger and frustration.

The ape, stepped back, a snarl forming in it's face.

'Damned dirty ape?' it exclaimed. 'No one talks to Don Uggie Apelino like that!' He gestured to another ape, who was holding a machine gun threateningly.

'Whack 'im out, Fast Eeek.'

And that was the end of George Taylor.

[Eamonn Clarke]

My Fair Lady

"You're Percy Malion, AKA Percy the Pig, Con-apt 1432, Rex Harrison block?"

"That's right, Judge."

"Time to explain yourself. Talk."

"It was the Frothy-Fresh shower gel advert that started it. That's where I first saw her."

"Saw who."

"The perfect woman, I'd never seen anyone as lovely. She had it all, the hair, the figure, the face of an angel, and those beautiful hands. The close ups of her lathering up with the Frothy-Fresh, well it fairly took my breath away, if you know what I mean."

"So what did you do?"

"I had to meet her, I had to tell her how I felt. So I contacted Frothy-Fresh and they put me on to the company who made the advert. At first they said they couldn't give me her name and contact details, but I can be persistent and after I dropped a few credits here and there I found someone who told me the truth about the model."

"Who was she?"

"She didn't exist. Not a single model anyway. They used a different model for each shot in the ad, One for the face, another for the legs, another for the breasts and so on. In all they used 12 different models to film that commercial. My perfect lady was a composite of a dozen different women."

"The magic of Tri-D. Most people would have called it quits there, but not you, Malion?"

"No, Sir. I was in love and a man in love will move heaven and earth for the woman of his dreams, I had the list of all 12 models and their body parts. It was obvious what I had to do"

"For the record state what exactly you did."

"I needed those body parts. I thought about gene-splicing and cloning. I had the funds but that would have taken too long. That's when I contacted Dr Praetorius."

"Praetorius is currently not cooperating with interrogation. Tell me what he did for you."

"He did the surgeries. We started with Ellie "the body" Macafee. She was going to be the host body for all the others. It was easy for me to lure the women to my apartment. We just told them it was for a fashion shoot. You can get any model out of bed for 5000 credits. A glass of drugged Synthi-pagne on arrival and we were set. And we would have gotten away with it if Frothy-fresh hadn't tried to book all the same models for another commercial. One model vanishing and we might have been OK but 12 missing models raised the alarms. And I was so close. Another two surgeries and I would have had her. The perfect woman all to myself."

"Percy "Pig" Malion I find you guilty of the abduction and drugging of 12 women, and the murder and dismemberment of 10 of those women. You're going to the cubes for life, creep. Looks like you might be making your own impression in the showers."

[Ursula K]

Here's probably the most obvious entry... and definitely the shortest one (hey, 500 words or less, right? )

"Rosebud..." Dink Jowett gasped with his last breath.

Sorry, couldn't resist. Only 8 words! That must be a record or what?

[Eamonn Clarke]

Nice!

IIRC Commando Forces entered a story in the Invasion Resistance Tales contest that was only four words long, and three of those were a single name repeated twice.

[Grugz]

Dirty, dirty harry )

   The man clutched his bleeding nose cursing his flat feet and the numerous body parts of hookers stuffed in his pocketsthat caused him to trip. He heard the distinct sound of a gun being cocked .
"this is a lawgiver mark one...dirty harry wasn't trusted with the new one ,it can stop an elephant if they still existed but harry ,in all this excitement cannot remember which ammunition types he ran out of . was it 5 or all 6? do you feel lucky creep? well do you?"

the perp looked unsure, his hand wavered near the concealed revolver in his jacket.

"only..." dirty harry continued, "if you feel lucky, would you please rub dirty harry's scratchcard ? dirty harry isn't allowed or Captain Dredd would come down hard on dirty harry's ass"

  "What the f....." the perp began as he went for his gun and exploded all over the alleyway.
"dirty harry has answered his question about the ammo he had hi-ex left,sorry 'bout the mess"

  Harry wiped some of the perp from his overcoat and peeled the eyeball that had adhered itself to his eyepatch after giving careful consideration to leaving it there to stop people staring at the patch.

  Dirty Harry went back to the precinct and spent an hour convincing the desk sergeant he was meant to be there and went to see the captain .
   Joe Dredd sat in his plush pleatherette swivel chair " What the hell harry?" you killed the perp and destroyed the evidence in one go!"
  Harry couldn't take his eyes off dredd's fringe it covered the captain's eyes and almost reached down to his prominent chin.
" We're cops harry ! we aint judge jury and executioner !" harry lit a cigarette, "you may have a rep for being a loose cannon and a bit weird who gets results but I don't give a fuck!"

  He threw the no smoking sign off his desk at Harry," what does that say harry?"
" same as that one " said harry pointing to the one on the door " but dirty harry doesn't give a fuck but admits he may be quoting from another film".

[The Legendary Shark]

Bladerunner - The 2000th Cut.
.
Deckard crashed onto the rotten timbers of the roof. Rain and splinters stung his aching body, his hand spasmed with grinding cramp. This was it, for sure. The replicant would be on him soon, with the strength to tear him apart.
.
He scrambled across the slimy surface, searching for a weapon - a piece of metal, a length of wire, a discarded length of wood - something, anything. But there was nothing.
.
Nothing. Not even the expected attack. Where the Hell was it? Why had the replicant not killed him already?
.
Deckard rolled onto his back, determined to at least die facing his attacker. He swiped the rain and grit from his eyes. Batty stood over him, head cocked like a curious dog. Deckard, his desperate feet slipping and scraping, pushed himself away until he collided with something and could go no further.
.
The replicant didn't follow. What was it doing? Was that a dove in its hand? Deckard's jaw tightened. It was playing with him, stretching out the kill.
.
Its white hair and skin slick with rain, the replicant grimaced as if against a migraine and then forced itself to gaze into Deckard's eyes. It licked rain from its lips. "I've seen things..."
.
Roy Batty's head exploded, its replicant brains darker and thicker than human tissue.
.
"Sorry I'm late."
.
Deckard looked around. "Slade! Am I glad to see you!"
.
Sam Slade nudged the replicant's corpse with the toe of his boot. "You shouldn't be," he said.
.
Deckard frowned. "Hell do you mean, Sam?"
.
Slade almost flinched, obviously uncomfortable. "Bryant sent me."
.
Deckard began to pull himself off his back. "Bryant? What do you mean?"
.
Slade raised his gun. "Sorry, Deckard, truly I am."
.
The single gunshot echoed across the rooftops as the rain eased and stopped. Slade, his face betraying guilt, stepped over the Deckard replicant's corpse to meet the incoming police flyer.
.
Just one more to go. Then that was it. He couldn't do this any more - replicants were too human - so he'd turn in his badge. Stick it up Bryant's fat ass. Employing replicants to catch replicants was too much.
.
But what else could he do? Slade nodded as Gaff brought the flyer in to land. There were lots of ordinary robots going rogue these days - maybe he could go private; hunting them instead...
.
(397w)

[Ursula K]

Another quick and easy one about the first ever 2000AD movie... until Hollywood got their hands on it. Released in 1998, if memory serves.

"This the new script?"
"Yeah."
"So it's about a roguish starship captain?"
"Yeah."
"And he just travels from world to world meeting aliens for the first time?"
"Yeah."
"On behalf of this PEST organization, which stands for... what was it again?"
"The Planetary Exploration and Survey Trust."
"Hmm."
"You don't like it?"
"I don't like it."
"Damn."
"Don't worry, we can salvage something from it. Let's see... we'll drop the sci-fi angle, no one watches those kind of movies anyway. Make it modern day, cheaper too. Romance, we've got to have romance. Let's make him the personification of death instead of a starship captain, that will work. And we'll shorten and simplify the title, I think. If he meets people, let's just say something like that. If we can do all that, we might just have something. You never know, we might even be able to get Brad Pitt to sign on."
"Works for me."

[Bad City Blue]

Avengers 1.1

The bar was pretty seedy. Not so much that the cockroaches went on strike for better living conditions, but enough that they always outnumbered the customers. Not that it was too hard today, as only a handful were in, all watching the man at the bar. After all, he was a celebrity, and celebrities usually frequented a better sort of bar.

'Gimme another,' the man grunted to the barman, who dutifully filled his glass with the finest whiskey. In reality it was cheap whiskey in the finest whiskey bottle, but the man didn't seem to mind.

'Tony' boomed a voice from the door, giving the man at the bar a thud that rattled through his head. 'I do believe we had a meeting half an hour ago. I figured you might have accidentally forgotten.'

'How'd you find me, Nick?' asked Tony Stark, for it was he. He turned round to see the head of  S.H.I.E.L.D looking at him, his one eye glaring.

'You think I don't know where my superheroes are at all times?' said Nick, playfully. 'You don't get to be head of the planet's biggest law enforcement agency by being sloppy with your things.'

'So I'm your thing now, huh?' said Tony angrily.

'You're the world's thing, man,' replied Nick, spreading his arms. 'Iron Man may be your private tinker toy, but when you saved every living thing on this planet people got kind of proprietary about him.' He sat down on the stool next to Tony and ordered a whiskey. When he tasted it he raised an eyebrow at the bartender and gave him the evil eye. 'No charge... sir' stammered the man and shuffled out of the way.

'Thought you were sober these days, Tony.'

'Yeah, well I got bored of it. Sniffing another dimensions butt crack will do that to you. I can sober up any time.' Nick looked at him disbelievingly. 'Nanobots,' Tony continued. 'Flush me out in seconds. It's a bit of a shock to the system, but effective.'

'So why don't you use them now?'

'Because I like being drunk now, Nick. Being drunk means the only person I have to worry about is me, and I don't care that much about me anyway.'

'That's for sure. You smell like my Aunt Edna on Thanksgiving. Look, Tony,' he said, getting serious. 'You cannot do this. You may be richer than most of the world put together, but God damn it you're smarter than them as well. I need you, Tony, and I need Iron Man.'

'Well maybe I don't need you.'

'Oh you need, me, Stark. You have one day to wallow in your pity swamp, mister, after which the whole world sees the pictures from your S.H.I.E.L.D medical - the unaltered ones that show Tony junior in all his glory.'

'Hey - I'd been swimming. There was shrinkage! I thought I'd had all those destroyed, anyway.'

'Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, Tony - I don't lose my things'.

'Damn you, Nick, you always get what you want, don't you.'

'Yes I do, Tony. Yes I do... and that, my friend, is why you don't fuck with Nick Stone, director of .S.H.I.E.L.D.

With that, the man with the eye patch left Tony to his day of misery.

[Heath C Ackley]

When The Chimes End.

Gunfire roused him. The music began again.

With a groan, Johnny sat up from his bed of straw. His fingers scratched beneath the tangle of his hair. The light, tinkling music - once so beguiling in its lilting sadness - bored into his head. It burrowed deep into his brain.

It had been hours since the implosion. Old SD agents had spoken before of such accidents. If there is a fault in the housing of a time grenade, on detonation the surrounding area can be thrown back in time. He had fared better than the slaver, whose body had been severed and separated by thousands of years. All Johnny had to do was sit tight until the time-line snapped back in place. He would soon be back on Tekka 2 with Wulf.

Johnny had first heard the tune soon after taking shelter in the stable. The one known as El Indio had spent the night alone, listening to the pocket-watch. Johnny recognised something in him. Men like El Indio killed not for profit or justice but for sport.

Through the wooden shutters, he watched the three figures circle each other. El Indio, fevered and uneasy, held out the pocket-watch for all to see. The old man studied him, his hand poised over his hip. The Stranger - eyes narrowed as if staring into a high wind - produced another pocket-watch from beneath his poncho.

The damned tune spun on.

Movement caught his attention. One of Indio's men crouched down inside the stable doorway. Dust covered his clothes and sombrero. He levelled his rifle at the Stranger. Johnny winced as a wave of static crawled over his skin. The air throbbed. He felt less there. Time was healing itself. He would be back in his own time at any moment. Focusing his will, Johnny drew his gun. His arm brushed the dry straw.

The sound made the outlaw turn. The shape behind him was fading, becoming nothing more than the white-washed wall. His rifle clattered to the floor. The eyes - two burning suns of scarlet - were the last to go. The outlaw dropped to his knees and repented every sin he had committed since leaving mother's breast.

'Diablo.'

Alpha's laughter drifted like a whisper in the wind.

Outside, the music stopped.

Outside, a shot rang out in the humid air.

[Jacqusie]

A Life Flew Low Under The Cuckoo's Nest...


..."There are many here among us, who feel that life is but a joke " stuttered the dealer. His face began to turn crimson again, as he blew the same thirty-seven (or was it thirty-eight?) hairs from his eyes, before they fell back into place, waiting for the next spit laden updraught.

"An' you can quote me on that" he grimaced as blue humpbacked cards spilled out onto the Formica surface, "it's by Dylan Thomas, the singer see" he puffed.

A low drone emitted from the man mountain at the foot of the table, as he stuck out a huge paw to scoop a pile of concave cards into his playing hand. "Dirty Frank has Royalty!"  he declared, a broad smile cracking across his mattered brown beard.

"For Christs' sake Harding, how may times have I told you that you only deal two cards for Blackjack not three!" bellowed a small, red haired man. "Ya got me busted before we even started ya noodle brain".

The pinched, taught face of Dale Harding shook for a moment, before he raised his eyebrows and found the words, "It's not my fault I have to count in three's McMurphy, it's the crazy, the form the content, God and Heaven. Hell, I don't know maybe it's just plain superstition!"

"Superstition keeps Dirty Frank in a daydream!" bellowed the heavyweight sporting a battered eye-patch. He appeared very pleased with himself as he held his right hand aloft, a huge index finger trembling skywards.

"Seems big foot knows his music beter'an you Harding', smirked Randle McMurphy, his fingers running down a filter-tip cigarette. Why don't I deal and save us all from your peculiar allusions of musical crap and obsessive jerking off" he grinned, wildly rolling his eyes before picking up the deck of cards from the table.

Harding straightened up, his eyes peering over is half moon spectacles as he collected his two cards. "I wasn't jerking off McMurphy, or having trouble with my allusions", he said. "I can't tell you guys anything in here, you don't understand".

"Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody". Dirty Frank was gazing mournfully now at Dale Harding, a tear journeying it's way down his weathered cheek.

"Sad is Dirty Franks song" he uttered in a broken voice before placing down his cards. The King of Hearts and the Ace of Spades.

"Hey, you've got blackjack!" yelled McMurphy, "God-damn! Ain't that something?"

Dirty Frank looked up at his friends, his face contorted in pain. The two cards adding to twenty-one were his undercover message to abort his mission. As he stood to leave the table, the two fellow players watched him slowly trudge towards Chief Bromden, who was leaning on a short bristled broom.

Harding blew his thirty-eight (or was it thirty-nine?) hairs from his eyes and whispered to no one in particular; "He was soon borne away by the waves, and lost in darkness and distance"...

[McNulty]

Avatar

Colonel Miles Quaritch stands on the Command deck and impassively surveys the alien landscape below him. He turns as he hears the main doors open and close and turns to see his adjutant come towards him.

"Has there been any word from our operative on the surface?" he asks his Lieutenant.

"None Sir, and it looks like we won't be getting any," the nervous Lieutenant replies.

"What the Hell do you mean?" exclaimed Quaritch. The Lieutenant takes a step back as other soldiers and scientists in the Command Deck look up from their duties, startled by the outburst.

"It seems our operative has become...sympathetic to the plight of the Na'vi" the Lieutenant explains, "He has spent so much time in the company of the natives that he has decided our plans for them are wrong."

The Colonel does not take this news well and becomes incandescent with rage.

  "He thinks what?! Does that blue bastard KNOW how much resources it took to engineering his body? Of how difficult it even is to make a form that can breathe that alien atmosphere? And now he dares to desert us and make his own decisions?"

The Lieutenant is visibly shaking now, "I'm afraid so sir, he's gone Rogue!"