ME
AND THE
GARGANTUAN
SPACE BABES:
Another
MILES DRIVEN Adventure
by D. Patrick Miller
Published by D. Patrick Miller at Smashwords
© 2010 by D. Patrick Miller
Smashwords Edition
All Rights Reserved
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Episode 1
I know what you’re thinking: How can it be that I, Miles Driven, Acclaimed Son of the Beach and Certified Tan Line Inspector, ended up in a landlocked doughnut parlor on a Saturday night at the very beginning of the Myrtle Beach mating season? Why was I staring down the candy crinkles atop a choco-coated cake-in-the-round when I could have been peering deeply into the plunging cleavage of some winsome Tennessee tourist?
Well, I confess: I was on the road again. Look, don’t blame Tank – he tried his damndest to talk me out of it. Caught up with me at Planet Hollywood just last Wednesday night, when I was already seven or eight under the tarp and leaning hard toward the back wall. If the Tankster hadn’t shown up right at that moment, I might have started drinking alcohol next.
You know the Tankard. Got that big round belly just like a globe, and always wearing that plain white T with an orange-blue stain right down there around Brazil. Came up to me with a Heinekens draft in one hand and a Cherry Garcia in the other, and said in his inimitable way, “Yo, Miles.”
“Tonka,” I replied. “How they hangin’?”
“’Bout the same,” he said, putting his half-melted pint on the table and brushing that one greasy forelock back up over his cueball head. Seeing my empty glass and my trembling hands, he put two and two together. “Been slammin’ back those Diet C’s, dude?”
“Yeah, T-Man,” I confessed. “Never could hide anything from you. Look, you might as well know first – I’m gonna hit the road in the next couple days. I feel like there just ain’t nothin’ here for me this summer. The Strand is bland, if you know what I mean.”
The Tankeray squinted at me like I was a talking calamari, then pulled his trusty plastic spoon from his back pocket and scooped some ice cream into his glass to make one of his famous beer floats. He sucked a good bit of it down before he got around to replying, making me good and nervous. “I see,” he said quietly. “Look bud, if you need some help with the rent again…”
“Hey man,” I protested, “that hurts. You know I ain’t the kind of guy to run away from my debts and obligations. I just… I dunno, man. I feel America calling. I got the road in my blood all of a sudden. I wanna see the wheat fields, and the purple mountain majesties, and the bombs bursting in air, and Charlotte, and maybe Akron. The whole country’s gonna be on the move this summer, and I gotta be there too, Tankaroo. I just gotta go!”
“Uh-huh,” he replied noncommittally, looking up into his empty, lifted glass like it was a telescope focused on God Himself. When he confirmed that his dinner was really over, he looked me straight in the eye and belched. After the air cleared, he said softly, “This ain’t gonna help if you’re still pinin’ for Julie, Miles. The road don’t fix a broken heart.”
He had me like a cold mullet on a curtain hook, but I was too proud to let on. “Julie?!” I shrieked innocently. “Julie WHO?”
Tankman gave me one of his go-to-hell grins and leaned back on his squeaking chair, massaging the whole world of his belly to see if he could make room for the inevitable aperitif. Then he leaned forward and cuffed me affectionately on the ear. “You’re gonna miss a whole slew of wet T-shirt nights…”
So that’s how I ended up at the flagship Krispy Kreme in Winston-Salem, miles away from home but as close to culinary heaven as a Carolina boy knows how to get. After many dusty days on the road (I always miss that turnoff in Darlington, dammit), I just couldn't imagine anything more rejuvenating than a long dozen of the KK's assembly-line sugar rollers. I'd pulled up to the joint in the friendly neon glow of the "HOT FRESH DOUGHNUTS" sign, and I was pumped for a mother-of-all-refreshments experience. Little did I know that the kicks I was about to get would be literally “out of this world.”
Everything seemed normal enough at first. A nice lady pushing sixty and wearing the name tag AGNES came up to me at the counter and said politely, “Whaddya want?” I'd done a serious examination of the display case as soon as I came in, so I was prepared: "Three glazed, two coco-coated with candy crinkles, four cream-filled eclairs with caramel icing, two buttermilks and a cruller triple. Oh, and a giant cuppa joe." Agnes seemed impressed; the phrase 'cruller triple' let her know I was a regular cognoscenti. But when she brought the goods, she smiled at me a little too friendly for a lady her age. I just wrote it off to the late hour.
Twenty minutes later, I was feeling a hi-octane sugar surge boosted with all the power that cheap, factory-ground Robusta beans can deliver. "This is the LIFE!!'' I shouted to no one in particular, although the other two customers and Agnes suddenly glared at me like I was trying to get their attention. I didn't pay them no mind, just pounded the counter until the napkin dispensers were hopping like fleas and cried out, "Agnes, babe! Let's talk second course!"
And that's when Agnes did a very strange thing. Glancing at her watch, she gave me that weird grin again and then proceeded to hustle the other two customers out the door. This wasn't easy, seeing as how one of them was a big fat guy who had obviously visited the bottom of a bottle of Thunderbird not long before, and the other was a mean-lookin' streetsweeper who apparently wasn't happy about pulling the graveyard shift, and had just started taking it out on a cinnamon twist. Somehow, though, she hustled them out of there faster than I could say Yes to Britney Spears. The fat guy yelped when Agnes shoved him out the door — it looked like maybe she had some kind of stun gun hidden in her palm. Then Agnes locked the door and turned around to give me the evil eye like you wouldn’t believe.
Well, I’m no Sherlock but I can figure out when something’s up. The problem was that I was a little giddy from all those empty carbohydrates, and that’s why I just sat there speechless as Agnes marched real slowly over to the cash register and hit a button that made this neon antenna come out the top of the machine. Little purple lightning streaks started jumping out the tip of the antenna, and Agnes opened her palm to speak into the stun gun or whatever it was. Honest to God, this is what she said:
“Senga to Mother Ship. Senga to Mother Ship. The Temple of lshtar is ready to receive you. I repeat, the Temple of lshtar welcomes your landing. A worthy sacrifice has been secured. Senga humbly awaits your arrival.''
Then — this is kinda hard to describe — it was like somebody drew curtains all around the doughnut shop and made everything outside disappear. Everything inside suddenly turned this blinding, pulpy purple color and there were weird paisley shapes on the walls like somebody was having a '60s flashback, only it wasn't me because I was too unborn to do any good drugs that decade. Then all the electrical stuff started going crazy just like that dude’s truck in Close Encounters, and there was a big BOOM like a Costco had been dropped on top of the Krispy Kreme. But I looked up and there wasn't any ceiling anymore —just an infinite black sky filled with those purple paisleys.
By now my little heart was going pitter-pat, let me tell you! I was just starting to wish I'd never left Myrtle Beach when Agnes (or was it "Senga"?) dropped to her knees and started wailing, “Please make me worthy, Great Crab Mother!” then started up a gibberish like I hadn’t heard since I went to that Church of the Mean Jesus over in Galivant’s Ferry. That’s when I began to get the feeling that my vacation road trip was about to take a major detour.
And then SHE appeared. I don’t know where she came from — she just materialized over by the display case, straddling it, actually, because she was about fifteen feet tall. She looked like she'd just stepped off a classic cover of Heavy Metal, wearing a ripped rag for a top and a leather thong that wouldn't be legal in the privacy of your own fantasy. She had long, rippling hair down to her thighs and she was carrying some kind of space rifle about the size of a Patriot missile. Before I could open my mouth to say Hey-how-ya-doin’ she was pointing that thing at me, and then her voice thundered through the portal of her glowing, ruby-red lips.
"Is this weaselly mortal the sacrifice?!" she sneered.
I leaned over the counter and saw that Agnes was passed out on the floor — a little too much excitement, I guess. So it looked like me and the giant babe had the joint all to ourselves. Now I’m no George Clooney, but I know when the time has come to make the move of a lifetime. I brushed my hair back carelessly and looked up at her like I just noticed something I liked, and said, real cool, “Don't you have a sister in Murrells Inlet?”
Episode 2
Look, you don’t have to tell ME what you’re thinking. You've got to be wondering how I — Miles Driven, Last of the Smooth Movers and a Celebrated Great Escapist — could have possibly gotten out of that situation from last episode. Remember how I was looking up the barrel of a Star Wars cosmo-blaster held by the giant alien babe? It sounded like she had me figured for some kind of human sacrifice to her space cult, the one that uses the flagship Krispy Kreme in Winston-Salem as a "Temple of Ishtar" and a landing base for their galaxy cruiser.
Sheesh — it just goes to show how a guy can't even stop for doughnuts on a vacation road trip without running into random violence, a hostage situation, and alien spaceships zipping around without any visible means of propulsion. I mean, what's the Old South coming to?
Anyway, back to the situation you were so concerned about. There I was, trying to talk down this 15-foot-tall, scantily clad Andromedan Amazon, using every line in the book. I'd asked about her sister, asked her if she wanted a drink, told her I was dead certain I'd seen her somewhere before, and finally, desperate for a foolproof icebreaker, asked what her sign was. "I'm a triple-Scorp myself," I lied. "Moody, intense, and very, you know, sensual."
I heard an electronic click and realized with relief that the saucy ET had put the safety back on her space rifle. She let the muzzle drop and glared at me with a pair of baby-blues that could turn your blood into slushie juice — especially since they kept turning into baby-oranges, then flashing blue again, then orange, back and forth, flash, flash, flash. I was mesmerized. My heart thumped, and I thought, Is this the woman of my dreams? Then I thought, But what about Julie?
The space woman's voice busted into my little reverie to the tune of about 700 decibels. “Who is Joo-leek?!'' she demanded.
Oh great, I thought to myself. She's got superior firepower AND she can read minds. Then I got smart and, reverting to the state of consciousness that had served me so well in junior college, made my mind completely blank. "Oh, nobody important," I cheerfully replied.