LITERARY ADVENTURE: The Time Machine, Part VI

SO FAR IN THIS LITERARY ADVENTURE: Doogie built a time machine with the intention of traveling back to 1894 London and watching H.G. Wells write the first page of his science fiction classic, The Time Machine. Instead he ended up in colonial in Philadelphia, where he lost a fight with a pygmy farmer and his battle ogre (who hit Doogie with a bathtub). Doogie woke to find himself a captive in the farmer’s basement, where the farmer raised hobos like cattle and fed them to a race of Molemen™, who traded him gold for human flesh.

The farmer knew about the time machine, but hadn’t discovered it’s true use. The queen of the Molemen™, who was being held ransom by the farmer, was locked in the cage next to Doogie. She gave him a sigul along with instructions to find her father, and revealed a secret passage beneath his cell. Doogie broke through the passage, found the king of the Molemen, and told him that his daughter, the Princess, was indeed alive.

Catch up with past installments: I, II, III, IV, and V.

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The farmer was sitting in his kitchen, I could see him through the windows. The kitchen’s overhead gas lamps flickered brightly and spilled out onto the dark lawn where the Molemen and I crouched in hiding.

The farmer was whittling a stick and sitting in front of an empty plate. My time machine’s key hung around his neck, the lanterns’ flames glinting off its brass.

The farmer hollered and a moment later Fran came lumbering into the room. I crept closer, careful to stay in the shadows, and tried to hear what they were saying.

“What do you mean we’re out of pork?” the farmer screamed. Fran just shrugged. Her big, dumb face elicited unexpected pity in me as she stooped to fit in the room and stoically took his shit. The farmer yelled at her for a couple minutes, then finally said “Alright, well go down and get that furry girl then, we’ll eat her. Make sure you pull off all the hair though.”

The Princess! I stood up and screamed over my shoulder. “Attack!”

Riding giant worms the size of elephants and swinging golden swords, the Molemen broke through the kitchen’s wall. Glass and wood flew everywhere. The farmer scurried under the table. Fran picked up the kitchen icebox and swung it like Thor’s hammer, squashing the Elephant Worms like . . . worms. (I’m sorry, but that’s the best way to describe it.) Fran was quickly overwhelmed and buried beneath a squirming pink mound while the Molemen beat her with rocks.

I was reveling in what I thought was our moment of victory, until the farmer’s eyes met mine, and I could see he wasn’t scared. Two little flames danced in his eyes, and a puckish smile tugged at the corners of his mouth.

My heart sank.

“I figured out what your machine does, queer!” The farmer reached into his overalls and pulled out a nasty looking laser. “It travels through time.” He pointed the gun at me, and a green flame shot out of its nozzle.

I dodged left, but too slowly. My right arm and shoulder disintegrated in a burst of green fireworks. It didn’t hurt at all, and I didn’t even realize my arm was missing until a second later, when I tried to catch my fall and fell flat on my face. I rolled on the ground dumbly searching for my former extremity, and barely noticed as the Molemen King leapt over me and rushed towards the farmer. Lifting his sword overhead he screamed “Die foul dirt tiller!”

The farmer didn’t waste time on a witty retort, he just pulled the trigger and blasted a cantaloupe size hole through King Ralph’s chest. My missing arm was immediately put into perspective for me. The King’s sword fell to the ground. The farmer whirled to shoot me, but a giant worm’s tail knocked him to the ground. He swept his ray across the frontline of the Molemen army, and their bodies blew away like dandelions in a strong wind.

I picked up the King’s sword and ran towards the basement. The farmer’s death ray swept after me, disintegrating the floor behind me and chopping great whacks out of everything in its path, Molemen, worms, and all.

I made it to the cellar door and tumbled down the stairs. I could hear the screams of dying Molemen and the sizzle of the farmer’s laser behind me as I rushed towards the Princess’s cage. I saw her huddled in the corner, hairy and disgusting as ever.

“Thank the Great Mole you’ve come to save me! Where’s my father?”

“Stand back!” I yelled, and swung the sword against the lock on her cage. I missed completely and the sword rang dully off the stone wall. “Shit. I’m having trouble wielding this, since I’m not left handed.”

“Use your right hand,” she suggested.

I pointed to the stub where my right arm used to be.

She looked at my stub. An awkward silence descended over the cellar. “Is that a new shirt?” she asked.

“Fool, you’re trapped!” I spun and saw the farmer rushing down the stairs.

I gave my sword to the Princess. “Here, break your lock and run!” I ran into the maze of cages just as the death ray scorched holes in the stone all around me. The farmer shot wildly into the darkness, but couldn’t see me. Was the laser’s beam dimmer than it had been before? I thought it was, perhaps it was running low of energy.

I scurried in the shadows. In cages piled high as the ceiling, the Basement People cowered and stared at me with desperate eyes. From a crack between two cages I looked out and saw the farmer standing very still, listening.

“Heeeeeere piggy piggy piggy! C’mon out! I promise I won’t shoot your pecker off and feed it to my baby. C’mon.” He advanced into the maze of cages, his laser drawn. “That’s a beautiful time machine you have thar. I bet you’re gonna’ take it back in time and have anal sex with Julius Caesar, right? Disgusting. I bet you’re going to lick his pecker and hold his hand and then settle down and adopt a few children from Asia, ain’t ya?”

I had no such scheme in mind.

“And then your parents, Roy and Zoey Bailey, youse gonna’ go and tell them ‘I’m in love with Julius Caesar, and we have sex! And I am NOT a troll, I’m a midget! And I never wanted to be a farmer, and why’d you make me marry that gigantic bitch?!’”

I leapt at the farmer like a panther, and immediately regretted not choosing to leap like a more nimble jungle cat, such as the puma, because he easily parried my blow and tossed me to the floor. I struggled to stand and he planted his wicked sharp knee under my chin. The basement toppled end over end, and when it stopped I looked up into the black nozzle of his death ray.

“I’m gonna’ go back in time and make out with Judas Iscariot,” the farmer said.

“No you’re not.” Princess Amidala stood outside her cage, brandishing her father’s sword.

Before I could stop him, the farmer shot Amidala with his death ray. The green flames licked across her body, enveloping her. I knocked the laser from the farmer’s hand and pushed him as hard as I could with one arm (remember, my other arm was vaporized; a lot of guys would bitch and whine, make a big deal out of it, but not me) into the wall of cages. A multitude of Basement People shot their scabby arms between the bars and held him fast. Terror welled in his eyes.

“Dear sweet lord Jesus! I never meant I was gonna’ swap spit with Judas!” he pleaded.

I wasted no time gloating. I picked up King Ralph’s sword and tossed it to the Basement People. They chopped off the farmer’s arms and legs. Then they broke the locks on their cages, and swarming over the farmer’s screaming torso, devoured him alive.

I rushed to Amidala’s body, which lay smoking on the cellar floor. All the hair had been burned off her body. I could see that underneath the grey fur, she actually was an incredibly beautiful woman. The kind of woman I could love. The kind of woman I would have given my life for. I cradled her sexy, smoking (literally and metaphorically), supple body to my weeping breast, and immediately got a small, sinful erection. How much longer would the Basement People be occupied devouring the farmer’s body, I wondered.

I kissed Amidala deep and hard, and a single tear rolled from her eye and splashed onto her cheek.

Amidala’s eyelids fluttered, then opened. She stared into my eyes. An eternity passed between us. Then she looked down at her body.

“Holy fuck, where’d my fur go?!” Her blood-curdling scream bounced off the cellar walls.

Check back in two weeks for the thrilling conclusion to Doogie's LITERARY ADVENTURE: The Time Machine series. The next installment of Doogie's live show, THE MINISTRY OF SECRET JOKES, is July 30th.