Bill - Bill On The Planet Of Tasteless Pleasure Part 15

Bill, who was working thirstily on his whiskey, was too plastered to really care much. He made a token effort to get behind the bar, but he found that his spurs had somehow gotten tangled with the bar rail. He was working on trying to take off his boots when the saloon door slammed open and the first of the outlaws squished through.

"It's Frank! Frank j.i.s.m!" came a frightened whisper from beneath one of the tables.

Bill was so stunned by the thing that walked in that he stopped his struggles and simply stared.

The creature before him looked like a giant comic book thought-balloon dressed in Western garb. Its body was round, bulbous and sheened with a thick fluid. Dark eyes peered malevolently out from beneath a black hat. Around its bulbous, glistening base was a belt and a gun. But its waist trailed off into a thin whiplike flagellum, which somehow not only supported its entire body, but provided its forward movement as well.

Frank j.i.s.m was a gigantic spermatozoon!

"Eggs!" Frank j.i.s.m e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "Where are the G.o.dd.a.m.ned dancing eggs, fer Chrissakes!" A protoplasmic arm and hand and finger held a gun. It squeezed off a round into the ceiling, and plaster rained down. It turned squinty little eyes toward Bill. "You, there, pardner. How c.u.m you're not a-quiverin' and a-quakin'

like these other cowards! How c.u.m you're not a'hidin' underneath a table."

The sperm squished over toward Bill, a dripping frown on its liquid face.

"Care for a drink?" asked Bill.

"I don't want no G.o.dd.a.m.ned drink!" Frank j.i.s.m snarled liquidly. "I wanna know how c.u.m you think yer such a hero!"

It stuck its gun directly into one of Bill's nostrils.

The cold metal was enough to wake up Bill's heretofore intoxicated sense of self-preservation. "Well, actually, Frank, to tell you the truth, I can't move. My boot's stuck." He pointed down to the spur caught in the bar rail and wiggled his foot. For some reason, when he pulled on it again, his foot slid out, revealing a damp and noisome sock.

The reaction on Frank j.i.s.m was immediate. His pale white face turned an immediate beet red. He started choking. The gun dropped from his hands and he fell back, gasping.

Immediately, a hail of bullets erupted from beneath the tables and behind the bars, rupturing the membranous surface of the giant sperm's skin. Frank j.i.s.m collapsed upon the ground, his flagellum whipping about like a dying snake.

With a gasp, Frank j.i.s.m died.

"Geez, Stoned Ranger!" cried somebody. "Put your boot back on! You'll kill us all."

Bill slipped his sock back into his boot and then looked back at Frank j.i.s.m on the floor, melting away like an ice cube on the stove. Shuddering, he poked his nose into his gla.s.s and finished his whiskey.

"Okay!" a growling voice cried from beyond the door. "Reach for the ceiling, toadstool!"

Bill lifted his hands.

Another sperm slithered through the doorway. It looked exactly like Frank j.i.s.m, only this one had a scar running down its bulbous face and body.

"It's Jesse!" cried the others "Jesse j.i.s.m."

The sperm wiggled up to the fallen body of his brother. He kicked it once with his flagellum, and the body just oozed all the way flat.

"Who done this?" he whispered through gritted pseudo teeth.

An army of arms stabbed pointing fingers toward Bill from beneath tables. "He done it! Him! The Stoned Ranger!"

Jesse j.i.s.m wiggled back a pace. "The Stoned Ranger!?"

"The Stoned Ranger!" chorused the others.

Bill said, "I think there's a case of mistaken ident.i.ty here!"

"Stoned Ranger, you kilt my brother in cold blood! Do you know who I am?"

"They say you're Jesse j.i.s.m," said Bill, slurring his words a bit. "But you look like a great big sperm to me!"

Jesse j.i.s.m grinned. "That's what I am, partner. The biggest sperm west of the Vasectomy River. And I'm the meanest one, too. So fill your hand and get ready to die quick, 'cause vengeance is mine!"

Quick as lubricated lightning, Jesse j.i.s.m pulled his gun.

In fact, the outlaw had his out before Bill even thought to go for his own weapon. The outlaw gun was pointing, and the trigger finger was just about to pull, when suddenly the Chinger burst through the front of the bar, tiny guns blazing.

Bullets tore into the front of Jesse j.i.s.m's chest, or into the spot where his chest would be if he had a chest.

The outlaw dropped his gun and staggered, looking down at the gaping hole in his middle. "Stoned Ranger! How you done that? I din't even see your gun hand move!"

A volley of bullets tore from the audience beneath the tables, slas.h.i.+ng Jesse j.i.s.m the sperm into shreds and rips and tatters, flattening him into a similar flat ruin as his brother Frank.

"Whoa wheeee!" cried the townspeople. "Yay Stoned Ranger! He kilt the j.i.s.m brothers!"

Bill twisted his boot toe on the floor in mock embarra.s.sment. And saw the Chinger Bgr standing by the hole he had knocked in the bar, blowing down the barrel of his smoking gun. "Hey, somebody had to do it!"

Wild Will stepped up and slapped Bill on his back. "Good shootin' fella! Well, the brothers are dead but Billy the Kidney and the j.i.s.m Gang are still out there somewhere, laying low!"

A voice shouted from beyond the door. "Frank! Jesse! You guys okay?"

"They're dead, Billy the Kidney!" snarled the bartender. "We got ourselves the Stoned Ranger in here, and you'll be just as dead if you waggle your tail in here!"

"Arrrgh!" he snarled. "Did you say the Stoned Ranger? Well, we've gotta make our deposit in the Ovum Bank tomorrow, and no Stoned Ranger is gonna stop us! Tell ya what, Stoney. I'm challengin' you to a shoot-out! Yeah, just you an' me, Billy the Kidney! At the No-Go Corral. Tomorrow, at the crack of dawn!"

"Right!" cried the bartender. "He'll be there, Billy. Just get ready for a trip to Boot Hill!"

"You mean 'Shoe Hill,' don't you," said Bill blearily.

"Naw. Billy bought himself a grave in Dodge City." cried the bartender. "Now you and your gang get your b.u.t.ts outta here, Billy!"

There was the sound of cursing, and then the pounding of horses' hooves clattering away out of town.

The bartender grinned back at Bill and the others. "They're gone! The j.i.s.m Gang and Billy the Kidney got run outta town! Hip hip hooray for the Stoned Ranger and his faithful companion Procto!"

"Hip hip hooray!"

Bill smiled blurrily. "Gosh, sounds good to me. Only what about his showdown at the No-Go Corral tomorrow?"

"Don't worry, Stoned Ranger!" said Wild Will, "Just so happens that the Sheriff is coming back in tonight on the ten-ten from Kansas City. He'll help you out!"

"Right!" said the Chinger. "And remember, you've got Irma waiting for you back in the hotel room! Gee - this is just great! The Ultimate Confrontation, tomorrow at dawn! This could be the very thing to nullify the Over-Gland! How symbolic!"

Bill did not hear the last part of Bgr's enthusiastic speech. He only heard the name "Irma," and that was enough.

"Irma!" he said, remembering. "And it's about time for me to head back to her waiting arms!"

"Here you go, sport!" said the bartender. "Another splash for the road, huh?" He filled Bill's gla.s.s with whiskey. "She's a-waitin' for you, hero!"

"You betcha!" cried Bill, draining the gla.s.s, turning unsteadily and started for the door and the hotel across the street.

"Enjoy yourself, Bill," the Chinger called after him. "I'll just stay here and enjoy a straw or two and jaw some with Wild Will!"

"Shwush," said Bill, hardly noticing, staggering out toward the door.

"Irma!" he said. "IRMA!"

How he yearned for her, yearned for her eyes, yearned to whisper sweet nothings in her ears. Bill had never felt like this before, not in his entire life.

So this was it, he thought, blinking through the reddish fog of alcohol.

He was in love!

Sigh!

He didn't know if it was his love for Irma or the whiskey, but he felt as happy as an Altairean sandhog in rut. Life had meaning after all, and all the meaning in life had fawnlike eyes, and a sweet smile and a cute nose and was spelled I-R-M-A!

And wonder of wonders, she loved him too!

Galactic Troopers didn't fall in love. There were specific regulations forbidding it. But Bill didn't care, mad, headstrong fool that he was. Could he finally, after all this time, feel something stirring in this bootcamp hardened heart? Sweet, gentle emotion!

Ah, sweet dear Irma!

With a lilt in his step, a song in his heart, alcohol in his brain and cirrhosis at the doorstep, Bill stumbled up the steps to the hotel. The clerk in the lobby was only too happy to tell Bill that Miss Irma had checked into Room 122, and that she was expecting him, apparently, having just ordered up two bottles of champagne and a rare sirloin steak from Room Service.

Bill grinned sappily.

His heart beating out the rhythm of his pa.s.sion, Bill stumbled down the hallway, looking for the room.

Eventually, the numbers "1-2-2" reared up before his fevered eyes. He tried the door. It was locked.

He knocked.

There was no answer.

But what was that? Bill thought he heard sighs of pa.s.sion from within.

"Irma, my shweet!" he called out throatily. "It is I, Bill, your beloved. Let me in, darling."

There was the sound of sudden screams and breaking furniture. Bill's head pounded with alarm.

Was something violent going on in there?

Irma was in trouble.

"Don't worry, Irma!" Bill called. "I'll save you."

He backed up, ran forward and aimed a great Camp Leon Trotsky-trained shoulder at the wood. One slam, that was all it took, and Bill crashed through the flimsy door. He staggered into the darkened room, bellowing, "Irma! Irma! Where are you! Irma!"

He immediately slipped on the empty champagne bottle and crashed face first to the floor.

He blinked blearily up from his sprawl on the ground, only to find two faces staring back at him, poking out of the covers of the big bra.s.s bed.

One belonged to Irma.

The other face in the bed belonged to the evil Dr. Latex Delazny!

CHAPTER 19.

SHOOTOUT AT THE NO-GO CORRAL.

"Irma!" cried Bill. He blinked his eyes, bulged and popped them in astonishment at the sight before him: his darling, the love of his life, under the sheets with his worst enemy, a villain intent upon rule of the universe.

"Irma! I'm here to save you!"

He hurled himself forward - then squealed to a stop and Irma called out.

"Stow it, buster," she snarled, training a derringer on him. "You harm a single hair on my darling's balding skull and I'll put a slug of lead right through your pinhead where, theory has it, you're supposed to have a brain."

"But - but -" stammered Bill. Reluctantly putting one and one together to get a horrifying two. Slowly but inescapably, reluctantly, the horrible truth trickled through into his consciousness and down between the alcohol loaded synapses.

"This can't be true! You're my girl!" Bill croaked helplessly.

"Men! A gal says a few silly words, and you think you own her! Real life just ain't like that, buster.

You've been reading too many romance comics. Now split." She sneered at him with contempt.

"But I love you, Irma," he whined in sickening self-pity. "And you said you loved me!"

"So I'm fickle. It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind." She snuggled up to Delazny, nibbled on his sh.e.l.l-like ear. Clam sh.e.l.l, that is. "I have found myself a real man!"

"But your father - he said that while Delazny l.u.s.ted after you, you always spurned him! That was one of the reasons that good man went ga-ga!" He turned to Delazny. "Irma was one of the reasons you wanted to plumb the secrets of the Over-Gland! That must be it! You're here, you discovered the secret power of attraction that drives women out of their mind, beyond reason.

"Actually, no, not quite yet," said Delazny. "Sorry, old sport ... that happens tomorrow when Billy the Kidney, the j.i.s.m Gang and I finish you and the opposition at the No-Go Corral and then plunder the outlaw savings at the Ovum Bank. You see, the secrets of universal power reside there." He looked at Irma and smiled. "Irma and I just ran into each other in the lobby and we hit it off at once."

"I realized how much I'd missed him. I was so naive, so priggish back in the old days. So, if you don't mind old friend, and I do mean old, why don't you split."